057: Audio & editing tips for your actual play podcast with David of Reckless Attack

Courtney: 3:11

I am super excited, you guys, because now I get to introduce you to David, a player and editor for the D&D 5E podcast Reckless Attack. David, how are you today?

David: 3:24

Great. I’m doing wonderful. It’s great to be talking with you.

Courtney: 3:27

I know it’s weird. I have been like listening to your voice for a very long time now. And we talk on Twitter over text, but like, this is the first time I’ve actually like talking, talking to you.

David: 3:38

I know it’s a, it’s a wild experience. I love it. It’s it’s so cool meeting people that you’ve like heard, like, I am like virtually best friends with you because I listened to your podcast and your interviews, but I’ve never actually spoken with you. So this is a, it’s a good time.

Courtney: 3:52

Cool. Well, David. I would love to know a bit about you, where you’re from and how you got into gaming.

David: 4:00

Yeah. So I live in Chicago, and I have been playing tabletop role-playing games for almost 15 years now? Maybe not quite that long. Definitely 10. But I started out actually at a local game store around here called the Dice Dojo. Stop me if you’ve heard this before. And they were running Pathfinder society games. And so, you know, I heard about them, I think either on, on the internet when I was in college or there was like a flyer somewhere, and I had always wanted to get into Dungeons and Dragons, but like, it wasn’t really a thing in high school for me as much. And so when I saw the poster, I was like, sure, whatever, like, yeah, I’m going to go, it’s going to be a good time. I’m going to learn a little bit and. I show up for my first game. And I think we do like some dungeon crawl or something. And ever since then, I was just like hooked, you know, I was just like, Ooh, the numbers in Pathfinder. Yes. Give me, give me the crunch. Give me the, the splat books and the feats. Yeah, I, I got started playing society and then from there ran games for a couple of years as well, like running Pathfinder Society games at the Dice Dojo. And then, kind of moved to, to home games and have tried out a couple of different systems since then you know, 5e, 4e. My, my favorite one I think is Numenera, which is the built around the Cypher System. So I ran a game of that for a couple of years and then. Played a lot of like Call of Cthulhu. So it’s just been, been all over the place. Yeah. Over the past decade or so.

Courtney: 5:44

Well, honestly, this lets me jump immediately into a patron question, which is.

David: 5:49

Yeah!

Courtney: 5:50

Yes. Is there a TTRPG that you have yet to try, but really want to?

David: 5:57

Ooh. I have actually recently wanted to try Lancer and I don’t know much about it other than there’s mechs in it. And I’m like, hell yeah, mechs ,like I I’m into that. And I, I know there’s like some, some crunch, but honestly, giant robots just sells me pretty hard. So that is, that is the one I think that I would love to try next.

Courtney: 6:22

I have to be honest. I have not heard of that one. What do you know about it?

David: 6:28

Ooh. The only thing that I really know is I think it’s, it’s similar to Shadow Run where the mechs are owned by different corporations. And so when you are building your character, you choose kind of like your main person, and then your class abilities are shaped around the like the license or the corporation that you align yourself with or or that you purchase. And so you can end up, you know, with those different combinations, building some pretty niche, mechs. But honestly, yeah, that’s all I know about it? I’ve just heard it floating around in the, the TTRPG Twitter space for a little bit. And I was just like, man, that’s cool.

Courtney: 7:11

Yeah, that does sound interesting.

David: 7:13

Yeah.

Courtney: 7:14

How often do you get to play that’s not Reckless Attack?

David: 7:20

Ooh, actually. these days like 100% of my time is my gaming is all Reckless Attack, but I will say before the pandemic really got into full swing, I did play a very long Call of Cthulhu campaign with a couple of friends. I, if I, if I’m saying this right, it was the Mask of Nyarlathotep game. And it was, we went for about two years playing Call of Cthulhu with the same character. There would be weeks where I would play Call of Cthulhu on Mondays and then D&D on Thursdays. But yeah, that was kind of my experience. Before that I didn’t really play too many other things outside of like Pathfinder or D&D 5E. Along with the, the Call of Cthulhu game, I was also playing in a very long long running game with Nathan. It wasn’t recorded obviously, but that was sort of the precursor to Reckless Attack. So I’ve been, you know, playing with, with Nathan and the group for quite, quite a long time.

Courtney: 8:27

Yeah, I know I’m tempted to ask, like, how’d you get connected with them and we can do like, maybe a little bit of that, but I also know that you have that available on your podcast. And Nathan kind of talked about it in his interview too, but for the sake of any listeners that are like, what are you talking about, Courtney? How old did you get hooked up with this group?

David: 8:49

Yeah. So I actually met Nathan through my now wife. Nathan had put out a Facebook post saying like, Hey, I’m looking for D&D players. Sophie had seen it and said like, Hey David, like this, this would be kind of fun to do. So Nathan and I got connected and we were chatting for a little bit. And then I kind of like reverse Uno’s Sophie into also playing with us. Cause like, you know, the more people playing Dungeons and Dragons the better. So that was kind of like the start of the group. And from there, I also wrote my brother who I’d been playing with for, for years and years ever since we got started. And then our, our sort of mutual acquaintance, Steve and that sort of like, from that single Facebook post, probably like six years ago now you know, we’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons. I want to say like basically every Monday since then. It’s just been kind of like Monday night is like D&D night and it really hasn’t ever changed.

Courtney: 9:51

That’s awesome. I didn’t realize you guys had been playing that long together.

David: 9:55

Yeah. We, we started out in like Nathan, just cramped, little side room and we would, we would come in and like, there would always be like snacks and drinks and we’d just hang out and have a good time. And since then it has sort of blossomed and evolved into kind of like the game that we have now. We’ve tried a couple of other systems, but for the most part, it’s been fifth edition just because that was the one that was like the most accessible for us. And the most like fill the niche that we really wanted to try.

Courtney: 10:28

yeah. Fair enough.

David: 10:30

Yeah.

Courtney: 10:31

So when the idea of a podcast was first broached, what was your reaction?

David: 10:38

I want to say it was like a very enthusiastic yes. At the, at the beginning, it’s just like, Nathan brought up the, I want to do a podcast. I’m like, hell yeah, let’s do it. And then the gears started turning of like, okay, what do we, what do we actually need to do now that we, we have said yes. I’d always wanted to do kind of, you know, a podcast, maybe something with audio, something creative but had never really been able to do it myself. So it’s funny when Nate, when Nathan wanted to do it, it kind of gave me permission to now like start looking into like, alright, how do we, what are, what are the, like the gear that we need? What is the software that we need? Like, how do we, how do we actually turn this from an idea into something we can put out into the world? So that was really exciting for me. 

I had started out I think it’s mentioned it before, but when we started recording, I just, you know, we just used like an iPhone just to see what it would sound like. And then we went to these kind of like lapel mics, just to see if we could like hook up players to those and see if it would sound any good. It did not. And so from there you know, it was like weeks and weeks of research into like, what microphones do we need? Like given the space that we’re in? what software do we record into? And, you know, that set up has obviously evolved over time into what we have now, but it started out, it just like Nathan’s room. Like his, his side room didn’t have a lot of space. We couldn’t find a good way to connect all of like the mics and their arms and everything onto the table. 

So I just like went to a friend’s house and just took some spare wood. And I was just like, I’m going to screw together this like little, little rig, and we’re going to, we’re going to connect all of the the microphones to that, and just kind of plop it in the middle of the table and see if that works. It ended up working just fine for awhile, but know, we also just didn’t have the middle of the table for anything. Since we’ve started the podcast, the you know, as one of the editors of Reckless Attack, the, the technical side of it has always been really interesting to me. It’s been a really fun learning experience figuring out like, what do we want our podcast to sound like? How do we continually improve? How do I push the boundaries of what we can do production wise? And yeah, that’s kinda my main focus and the thing that I, I really enjoy doing with the podcast.

Courtney: 13:17

So, did you have any experience with this kind of technical side of things beforehand?

David: 13:25

Absolutely not. I had, I had no idea, like, what is the difference between a dynamic and a condenser mic? Like what, what the hell is a decibel? Like, I don’t really know, you know, I had no idea what any of this was. But it just like. When I started looking at it, like it just started drawing me in you know, what like what software do people use? I know a lot of people use Audacity. We use Reaper there’s obviously software out there for the recording that we’re doing. Like Zencaster you know, what are the different options available? And I had researched, like I said before, like, you know, what kind of, what kind of mics work? I know a lot of people use condenser mics, like when, when you are in a kind of treated room and you’re by yourself you can use some really, you know, high tech, really good sounding mics. But we record in a, a live environment, we record all around the table. And So you know, I knew that the really, really good mics: one are very expensive and I needed to buy five of these but would not work for our purposes. And so, yeah, these are like cheap $30 mics, handheld mics that I, I have like positioned optimally around the room so that we can kind of cut down on the crosstalk as we’re all sitting in the same space. Part of the fund was really, you know, we obviously have limited budget, and not everyone’s made of money. So trying to figure out like, what can we do to still sound good without obviously breaking the bank? Yeah, that’s been like, that’s been the, I think the most fun part for me.

Courtney: 15:06

When you normally are recording, you have mics set around the room, but not in front of people or…?

David: 15:12

So they are in front of people. The way that it works is we have you know, we have a, a big table that I found on Facebook marketplace, and then we have these just regular mic arms that are kind of screwed into it. And then from there, the microphones are pointed directly into our mouths. But we’re just kind of spaced around the room in such a way that they don’t overlap with each other.

Courtney: 15:37

Okay. Yeah, that was actually another thing I was wondering about too, is like, okay, when you have a bunch of people in the same room, how do you make sure that there’s no overlap?

David: 15:45

Yeah. The, the biggest thing I want to say is… One, like as much as you can, you know, place the microphones far enough away from each other. So with our mics specifically with dynamic mics, there are angles off to the side where they are the least receptive. And so if you can angle everyone in such a way to, you know, to hit that angle it minimizes the crosstalk. In addition I actually I built a bunch of sound panels in the room, and so we have yeah, the whole wall is basically just covered with foam and the corners have these like acoustic panels that are, are held up in the corners. As part of the research, you know, and even just standing in this room without them in here, it gets pretty echoey just cause it’s a small room and that was something we had to fix. And so I had actually like, you know, I, I ran around to all these different, like thrift stores picking up just like towels and bedsheets and things that I could stuff in them to, to kind of make these sound panels and, and treat the room so that the echo didn’t bounce off the walls and get into the mics.

Courtney: 16:58

That’s honestly something that I need to do for myself

David: 17:02

I’ve got some some good recommendations if you need them. So,

Courtney: 17:06

I’m just like, okay. Sitting here taking notes, thrift stores, towels, blankets. Okay. But what about the foam? So what foam you get?

David: 17:14

So I would say that the best acoustic foam that you can get is not actually like quote unquote studio acoustic foam. It’s actually from this company called Rockwool which is used for soundproofing in walls. And so if you can get it, you know, the right thickness then you can just cover it, hang it up on your walls and you’re good to go. So for those of you who need to soundproof large rooms or large areas of space. I would definitely look into the Rockwool foam.

Courtney: 17:51

I am definitely gonna look into that. If the intent is also a soundproofing, well, I might want to put it on my ceiling because as we record, I am listening to my new neighbor, just stomping around upstairs.

David: 18:04

yeah, I think when my house was built, there was absolutely no insulation put in between the floors. And so if I ever redo the floors I’m going to buy so much of it and just throw it in there. Yeah.

Courtney: 18:18

Just all of the layers of insulation.

David: 18:21

Yes.

Courtney: 18:22

Amazing. Okay. So talk to me about the timeline. If you can remember on I know you started with the iPhone and then you got the lapel mic and then you got the mics and you’re trying to figure all of that out. And you had a little tree in the center of things. So just when in the process of like the series thus far, would you say that changes happened?

David: 18:49

I would say probably, you know, we, we start deciding that we want to do a podcast and then the first couple of iterations happened probably within a month. And then from there, along with the dynamic mics that we have, we also needed to get a… an audio interface that would support XLR input because to my knowledge, at least you can’t really record multiple mics at the same time using USB. And so unfortunately with five people you have the only one that I could find was a eight XLR audio interface. Like it goes from like 1, 2, 4 and then 8. 6. And so from like month, one to three was me just like getting this audio interface and being like, what the hell are all these buttons? what does any of this do? So I like, I would be sitting in, in Nathan side room, just like poking buttons and seeing what happened in, in Reaper when we were recording. And for the longest time, like we would just not get any audio and I wouldn’t understand why. And so like that experimentation took a very long time. And then from there, like once we’ve got our mics and everything is sounding pretty good, we spent probably like a year and a half afterwards and not all of it was just like testing time. A lot of it was also, you know, the pandemic had happened, and we didn’t really want to remote record remotely, so we, we did a lot of waiting. In that time, we also did a lot of like test recordings. Cause it’s not, it’s not really just the, the microphones that you have to worry about. It’s also, you know, in Reaper, in your, your audio editor of choice, if it’s Audacity, if it’s pro tools. What do you do with compression? What do you do with EQ? What do you do with all these plugins and sound effects and things that when you’re starting out, you don’t know anything about like how to make yourself sound good. And so that took probably like within that year and a half, like six to eight months to figure out of me just like playing around and we would do when it was safe you know, test recordings of, of one shots. And I would use that audio to figure out how, you know, how do I clean it up? How do I make us sound good? And then, you know, from there, we, we released our first episode in October of 2021. yeah. I want to say October of 2021, if my, if my timeline is correct.

Courtney: 21:36

Oh, my God.

David: 21:37

I know, right? Yeah. It’s so it’s so weird. And you know, we’ve, we’ve gone through a couple of iterations since then, mostly just with the with the software. I I’m always like trying to you know, rebuild our template, rebuild the, the plugin suite that we’re using to make the, the whole process just faster, easier. I started fiddling with the software probably like a year ago. And I’ve just been, you know, going through that whole, like, what is it? Dunning Kruger cycle where it’s just like, I know everything. I know nothing. I know everything cycle, just like over and over again since then, and I have like, in that process, it’s really cool. Cause I’ve learned so much from people online. Just like people that know so much more than me. I’m like, ah, yes. Give me, give me the knowledge. Give me the morsels of technical prowess that I need.

Courtney: 22:31

Have you been using Reaper the whole time?

David: 22:34

Yeah, we, we made the decision pretty early on to use Reaper. Just because it offered us a lot of customization. I’ve actually I’ve used Audacity once I think. But the big thing with Reaper is just that when you, it has a nondestructive delete. And so when you delete something, it’s, you can undo it very easily. And so, you know, when I’m editing, I’m obviously cutting and adding things back in all the time. And so that functionality was very important to me. But also there’s just a lot, a lot of like hotkeys and automations and, and things that you can do with Reaper that were really helpful for speeding it up. Like, I think episode one of Reckless Attack took me probably like 30 to 35 hours to edit for one hour of audio between just like wanting, you know, A, wanting to get it perfect. But also just like struggling with the software and trying to figure out okay. This is the actual episode. So it’s like, I got to put a lot of effort in to make it sound good. But since then, you know, being able to add more macros and more plugins to streamline the process in Reaper has really made it our tool of choice.

Courtney: 23:50

Okay. Well, I want to dig in to that a little bit more. So like what kind of macros do you have set up? What are the plugins you’ve got?

David: 23:59

Yeah. So starting with the the macros. The big ones I want to say are just something that will just delete the piece of audio that I’m selecting over. And then one that will also do ripple editing. So something that will take, you know, I can select the time selection and then ripple edit, and then merge the two pieces together. So this is mostly useful for when I’m cutting out. “ums” and things like that. You know, there’s like every good editor recognizes a “um,” by the wave form and it haunts us in our sleep. So that’s something that is very helpful with that. The other ones are I have a one that, you know, reduces the the sound of something by like five decibels. And it just makes the like loud breaths, a little bit less harsh. But to be honest, just like the, the two that I use, like always delete and ripple edit are like my go-to. But I will say the thing that I think is really a game changer, especially in Reaper is getting a gaming mouse, which I know it makes no sense, but Having a mouse that has a scroll wheel that also moves side to side for me has been really good. Cause then it’s just like, my hands are never leaving the keyboard or the mouse and I can just move around the, the audio very quickly and I can scroll really easily and nudge left and right. So that really speeds up that process. So get the right hardware to, to, to make your life easier. Other editors, if you haven’t already considered that.

Courtney: 25:37

I have a basic gaming mouse, but like, shoot, maybe I should go fancier.

David: 25:40

Yeah, I honestly it’s like, it’s not even too much. And the time saving that you will get from just like not having to scroll up and down is enormous. Like that. That was, you know, I tell everyone to do that cause like, it’s just, for me, that is a huge game changer. Plugin wise, I have gone from just over-processing our audio where I would run every track through like 15 different plugins to, to clean it up, to compress it, to make it sound a certain way. And now I have realized that like, I didn’t need to do that. And we, we probably only use three to four plugins. For us, the important ones are recomp, which is just like a basic compression plugin. There’s a compression plugin in every tool. I use TDR Nova, which is a dynamic EQ, and then we have a de-plosive cause that’s also still an issue for us. And then we also use Vola 2, which is another compression software. But those two, are the main thing, because for me, at least like the most important thing for your audio is just getting it level, which can be hard, especially if you’re doing remote recording. And it’s hard to adjust that on the fly. You know, we’re all sitting in the same room, so I can just twist the knobs. If someone’s being a little quiet, but having, you know, using compression and then also just in your software, tweaking the knobs so that everyone sounds about the same level is like so vitally important that I, I place a big emphasis on that. 

Recently, like we used to do a lot of EQ. I don’t do a lot of it anymore. Just because I used to think that EQ would make you sound good and it really just makes you sound either less, bad or different. You know, you, you can use EQ, you can get that kind of like podcaster, like that kind of like NPR radio voice, if you, you tweak a certain thing, but really the whole point of EQ is to like filter out room noise or electrical hum. You know, like there’s a lot of tutorials online that will just say like when you’re using EQ like put a, a high pass filter on at a hundred Hertz. And like, that’s just the thing that you do. But for a lot of people, like, you know, you don’t, you don’t really ever consider like, why would I need to do that? And so initially we just put that on and it was fine. But like to my knowledge, at least, the main reason that you’d want to do that is because there’s electrical home around like 50 to 60 Hertz, which. Is a huge problem if you’re using a USB microphone, but we don’t use any of those. And so we don’t have that problem. And so now I don’t, I don’t use a high pass filter. I’ve used less and less EQ as we’ve gone on because I’ve put such a emphasis on making sure that the initial audio sounds good that I really don’t have to do a lot of fixing in post production outside of just like again, the compression. Yeah, we use like just the teensiest bit of EQ and that’s that’s basically it.

Courtney: 29:07

So walk me through the setup for each recording day. What do you do to make sure that everybody’s audio sounds good before you start?

David: 29:17

Luckily because I have sacrificed one of my rooms to the recording gods, and we just have a studio basically. I don’t have to change a lot day to day. We all sit in the same spot. And so that makes it very easy, but I do always you know, check to make sure one, we’re recording, and two that the levels are still good. Like there that they’re all around the same place. Typically, you want to record around like negative 24 to like negative 18 decibels to make sure that there’s enough headroom. Cause we’re, we’re also a pretty dynamic group, you know, we, we laugh a lot and so we want to make sure that that doesn’t end up clipping. So I always, you know, really try to laser focus in on the the levels. Also just making sure that like our air conditioner isn’t running we have a washer and dryer right outside the room. So I like to make sure that those are turned off. Cause like, you know, like I said, or like you can’t really fix that kind of stuff in post very easily. And so, you know, I think the most important thing is just making sure that your recording room is quiet and, and you know, as much as you can get it. Yeah. Other than that, I don’t really do too much. Although, I admit I get on people’s cases when they are not talking into the microphone and they’re like, angled away as we’re playing just cause mic discipline is something that we’re all working on. And so that’s something that I pay attention to, but like, that’s basically it. I want to say, just making sure that our recording environment is as quiet as we can and that all the levels are consistent.

Courtney: 31:03

Yeah, I know I’ve heard, y’all mention mic etiquette in various episodes of Reckless Attack. So I am curious on, you know, is there like a list of things that y’all had to specifically go over at the beginning or that you kind of figured out along the way?

David: 31:19

So for me, at least I’d actually didn’t know what the proximity effect was when you’re recording for a really long time. And so I would always like, basically eat the microphone. Like I would be, you know, less than an inch away from the microphone. Cause I thought that that was the distance that these mics you know, picked up voices that not the case obviously. And so I I’ve had to learn and, and kind of show others like, you know, good distance is probably like three to four inches away from the microphone and you want to stay around there and not move your head too much. Which can be hard for us too, especially as we’re looking at different people around the room and looking at our character sheets and stuff. But that is probably the, biggest thing with mic discipline, at least for us. But we don’t have a lot of like technology and keyboards and like computer fans and things to really worry about. I would say like, if you’re recording remotely, Make sure that you know, goes back to having a quiet room or a quiet setting, but like make sure with your mic etiquette and your discipline that you’re also not like clicking around on keyboards and like introducing more noise than you really need to, into your microphone.

Courtney: 32:35

Yeah, which is sometimes difficult to control when you have guests that are not experienced podcasters. And you’re just like, Ooh, I heard all of that. It’s fine. Atmosphere.

David: 32:46

Yup. Yup. Yup. It’s good. I mean, sometimes it’s like, well, the dog’s going to bark and that’s just great, but honestly, that’s, that’s, that’s ambience.

Courtney: 32:54

And you know, sometimes I can tell like, oh, yep, they’re having tea. There’s a little like spoon stirring.

David: 32:59

Yeah, I, I know people that like, they have to record with a window open cause it’s so hot. And then there’s just like sirens blaring out, you know, outside all the time. It was like what are you going to do about it? You know?

Courtney: 33:11

Yeah, you do what you can

David: 33:13

Yeah, Fix what you can.

Courtney: 33:15

Exactly. As long as I can make my audio sound as best as I possibly can. I think most listeners are understanding and get it, but it’s really interesting to hear, especially with the fact that y’all do have the advantage of being able to sit in the same room and have a dedicated space to it. When did you sacrifice your room to it? Was that like from the very beginning or…?

David: 33:38

Oh yeah, yeah. Basically immediately. Cause I had bought this house, you know, in the middle of the pandemic. Surprisingly, even after a, a year and a half still want to do the podcast, you know, it was like still the thing that we were like, so we’re, or we’re doing it soon. Right. So, it’s funny, even as I was like walking through houses, I was like, that’s the podcast room. That’s going to be it. And luckily Sophie, bless her heart, agreed. And this is, this is, this is not the, the podcast room. It is the hobby room for us,

Courtney: 34:09

Oh, okay.

David: 34:10

though 95% of it is taken up with audio equipment.

Courtney: 34:14

Well, yeah, I was going to ask like, what else happens in this room?

David: 34:18

Oh, yeah. So we have, we have a 3d printer sitting in the corner and then all of our Various power tools, mostly just a drill. And that’s, that’s basically it. That’s all that goes on in this room. Everything else is just like chairs and microphones and sound panels.

Courtney: 34:36

What do you 3d print?

David: 34:38

Recently it has been tiny little feet. I’m just going to let that hang there. But it is feet for my my small, my computer. Cause I need Like little spacers to get it off the ground. Just, just, just make that pause as long as you can in post just, just an hour long, then leave it there.

Courtney: 35:03

Like I almost don’t even want to include the explanation. Amazing. Okay.

David: 35:09

We all, like, I will also just make like dumb Thanos heads. Like, I, I mostly have the 3d printer for the meme. Like, let’s be real. Like, give me those like plastic trinkets all day, every day. That’s that’s what I’m here for.

Courtney: 35:22

Love it.