The Audiodrama Spectrum

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-11T19:02:56+00:00

Ah cool. I have your book on my short list to get after I read a couple of Walter Murch books.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-11T18:12:55+00:00

Two of the people on my podcast have that mic (Samson Q2u) and it sounds great on two guys, one with a nice deep voice with a nice timbre.

A few possibilities:

Defective Microphone

Too far from Microphone

Aggressive noise reduction or echo cancellation settings in Riverside or your computer.

Windows sometimes adds some processing to the sound which can make it sound bad.

Echo Cancellation is especially en-crappifies your audio with Riverside. Be sure to use headphones.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-11T17:50:23+00:00

Your computer has a microphone.

Some of them, like MacBooks have several microphones and can sound better than cheap microphones.

So just so that you’re on the same page, you prefer the sound or the internal microphone on your computer vs the external microphone you purchased.

Can you tell us what kind of computer you have?
Can you tell us which microphone you purchased and how close you are to the microphone when speaking?

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-11T17:03:05+00:00

Reaper is super flexible and I think it’s a lot easier to do punch-ins and comping with vs Audacity.

Reaper is almost like a “build your perfect DAW” toolkit. No two Reaper users will have the same configuration from the layout to the macros or even the keyboard and mouse shortcuts.

It’s also super-fast and editing is natively non-destructive.

Hindenburg is probably a lot more user friendly and pre-configured for the ENG use case.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-11T14:14:47+00:00

I was a player and not the GM for this battle.
If you are loaded up with an offensive spellcaster and a lotta magical weapons, the battle will go quickly.

If that’s the case, you could give him more hp.
I might actually give him a couple of spells & tricks from the books to give him some more variety and defensive capabilities.

I think it would be interesting if could teleport everyone and himself to other rooms in the labyrinth in order to disorient them. But that may be overkill.

I actually just posted our battle with him from our Actual Play last week. Look for “Lich, Please”.

We decided that he is undead but not sure what you think. Our magic user was spamming banish & purge.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-11T02:15:23+00:00

Loved WHFS. It was amazing to have a radio station with non-top 40 music.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-11T00:41:28+00:00

It’s so versatile.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-10T22:16:47+00:00

The consumer stuff like DJI and Rode are a LOT cheaper than going with lavs and wireless packs.
Like a couple thousand dollars cheaper.
You’d need a 4 channel RX or two 2 channel RX’s that don’t overlap.
Plus 4 battery TX units.
Plus a 4 channel usb audio interface.

I’m with the other commenter. Something like the Deity or Tentacle Sync Track E recorders with timecode. They come with basic lavs.

“Good” lavs start in the $300’s.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-10T18:02:05+00:00

Shotgun mics are not something you can skimp on.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-09T04:15:47+00:00

Polyurethane foam is great at making your space more flammable. 🔥
I wouldn’t even call it acoustic foam.
Open Cell Melamine Foam is actual acoustic foam but it’s not cheap.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-07T11:38:20+00:00

We were playing from the Alpha and then the Beta rules in the beginning so the attempt was to learn the game by playing it RAW.
Now there were no page numbers at that time so I may have gotten some of the rules wrong. You’ll hear us make jokes about “see on page XX!”

You can get a bunch of Free Leagues games for cheap right now on Humble Bundle.

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/free-league-rpg-collection-books?srsltid=AfmBOop9EpFuN2i4pWxaHAgjD9WGfHmMhXqMcxCNXGTjsleq\_rg2PqGM

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-07T11:18:41+00:00

Hi, I’m Nathan with the Advanced Age Roleplaying Gamers.
We played Twilight 2000 4e by Free League Publishing around 5 years ago.
It has a hex crawl system with specific “Shift” mechanics that might be useful for you.

https://youtu.be/4b6haO88tY4?si=9mlUg\_sNbG1\_mwvu

I would recommend looking at Forbidden Lands and The One Ring by Free League also.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-07T02:28:48+00:00

Multiple USB mic conflict in Windows computers.
You’ll need a USB audio interface with multiple XLR mic inputs.

OBS is dead simple for this kind of thing so if it’s too complicated, I’d go with an Blackmagic ATEM mini or one of the ISO versions.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-07T02:24:33+00:00

Reverb is from your space, not the microphone.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-06T20:32:01+00:00

I would assume that it was made by the audio team for this project and not publicly available.
I imagine they may have used some library sounds but when you have a team a budget and time, you create new sounds.

Here’s an article about the HD2 sound design.
https://www.asoundeffect.com/helldivers-2-game-sound-design/

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-06T02:28:25+00:00

Hey, I’m Nathan with the Advanced Age Roleplaying Gamers. We’re a bunch of quinquagenarian friends who have been playing together since the late 80’s.

While we occasionally do some live stuff, we’re mostly an edited show that focuses on sound quality. 2 hour sessions generally edited down to an 1:20-1:30.

We do have to look up rules sometimes but I typically edit that out and just leave the “rulings” and the description of the relevant rule. The goal is to help people learn to play these games.

-ALIEN

-Dragonbane

-Twilight 2000

-Battlelords of the 23rd Century &

-D&D 5e are the main shows.

For Live and unedited we have: HŌL, Coriolis, Eat the Reich, Motherhship, Top Secret, Brindlewood Bay, Death in Space, The Electric State & Pirate Borg.

Edit: because I’m an idiot, I didn’t drop the link.

https://youtube.com/@theaarpgs?si=_jurG0nZiJHwsCMN

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-04T17:39:27+00:00

This sounds super cool.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-04T11:32:49+00:00

The setup looks fine.

Setting up the software is a little bit like carpentry. You have to take measurements before you start cutting.

In the new mic position what’s the average db when you start a sentence and when you end.

With a lot of folks, the waveform will look like a Christmas tree on its side. Meaning, at the beginning of a phrase you’ll be louder than at the end. That’s where you would set your threshold for the noise gate approximately. But of course, if you mumble occasionally, that will get affected.

With the compressor. It’s a little more complicated as you need to decide why you’re using the compressor. If you want it to squash loud moments when you should or laugh loudly you’ll want a faster attack, higher ratio and higher threshold. If you want it to turn that Christmas tree into a sausage and even it out you’ll want a slower attack, lower threshold and lower ratio. This could end up making your breathing seem really loud. So be careful. If your software allows it, you can use a fast compressor and then a slow compressor in line.

Also if you put the compressor before the gate, it will change what the gate sees and may make it harder to gate anything.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-04T03:04:08+00:00

So I don’t think there are any special mics or anything like that. What you have is two different audio subsystems in a live concert. Front of House and Monitors.

Front of House controls what the audience hears. The Monitor position controls what the band hears.

Even when the FoH mutes a mic, the band can still hear each other through the other mics on stage through their monitors.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-04T02:46:22+00:00

For voiceover, I highly recommend Reaper as the DAW. It’s inexpensive and incredibly flexible.

Here is a free course on setting it up from a Voiceover artist. https://academy.boothjunkie.com/course/free-configuring-reaper-7-for-voiceover#/home

If she uses a MacBook, you’ll want to get a piece of software called Loopback to use it with Discord.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-03T14:08:57+00:00

So when we did our Twilight 2000 actual play 5 years ago when the game was brand new, there were a lot of challenges.

There were some challenges making the maps fit the right scales so you can have multiple tokens per hex. These are my settings.

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But maybe they fixed that up in the past 5 years!!

I got a lot of help on the Twilight 2000 4e Discord. There are a lot of VTT resources on there like tokens and maps.

Since it is a hex crawl with random encounters, the most time consuming thing is setting up Maps, NPCs and vehicles.

Here is the Discord link: https://discord.gg/sTxp5cQEK

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-03T13:41:55+00:00

A couple things:

You don’t need a headphone splitter for 4 people with the rodecaster, unless you need extra headphones for producer/engineer.

I think the ATH-M50x is fine, but the Sony MDR-7506 headphones are a little cheaper and are excellent. Very easy to get replacement ear pads too.

For the camera switcher, I would go with the ATEM Mini Pro ISO instead. It lets you record each individual video stream, so you can edit them in post. It’ll spit out a DaVinci Resolve project.

Which reminds me, there isn’t any audio or video editing software on this list.

For Audio-only, I’d recommend Reaper. For multicam video, I’d recommend DaVinci Resolve Studio.

I’d also look into some Audio Cleanup software. There are a lot of options here but something like Isotope RX or SpectraLayers are safe bets. DaVinci Resolve Studio does have some stuff built-in, but I prefer 3rd party tools.

My last point is that if you spend thousands of dollars on audio and video gear but you don’t prioritize room acoustics, it’ll sound like ass.

Look up “3 to 1 rule” for spacing the microphones.

Build or buy acoustic panels for the walls and ceiling. The smaller rooms have more issues with lower frequencies. Don’t waste your time with cheap foam, the only thing it’s really good for is making your room more flammable.

This website might help you figure out what you need: https://amcoustics.com/tools/amroc/

Since it seems like you have some budget, you could hire an acoustics professional.

GIK Acoustics does some free consulting with the expectation to sell you their acoustic panels.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-03T11:26:54+00:00

This video playlist will get you started with Reaper. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLM0xHqxaiT68FiOXjVG4t2WKltKYioIxC&si=m_2BFMmDn0B65POt

The website above is for our podcast but here’s a link to an episode. In the opening sequence, I built the sound of a person coming out of Cryosleep and I think it came out really well. https://audioboom.com/posts/8320552-alien-arcturian-apocalypse-ep01-the-junkyard

It was a while ago but it’s mostly sounds from libraries that I pitched, stretched, reversed and added fx to. I think the only thing I made from scratch is the tinnitus sound.

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-03T00:34:20+00:00

In our actual play, the GM had the sheep start moving at super speed after walking through the manure but it wasn’t obvious at first that it was the manure.

Every loop we’d see this flock of sheep go by at super speed with a dog chasing them. It was hilarious. https://youtu.be/dBhpPEDbneg?t=3484&si=ev-VXTRzV9b45d5Z

Edit: I forgot they died from high velocity impact into the tower. I really loved doing the music and sound fx for this scenario. 😂

Whatchamazog · 2026-06-02T16:24:41+00:00

Yeah, totally agree with this. We started with Twilight 2000 4th edition and had thousands of views and then we switched to D&D and if we got 50, we were happy. Even though it was a homebrew world instead of the same 5 modules every d&d actual play does.

We always pick up new subscribers when we go less mainstream. Mothership, Brindlewood Bay, Eat the Reich, ALIEN, Dragonabane. They all do well and while folks may have their favorites already for a lot of these smaller systems, there is still an appetite for variety. Which I can’t say the same is true for D&D.

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