SQRPT: Behind the scenes

As of the third episode, here’s what I use for The Squirrel Report.

A cheap Behringer 1204FX mixer. A lot of people think Behringer is crap but this isn’t a music studio, it’s a show with questionable audio quality from the start and the 1204 was on sale at Amazon. I picked the 1204 because it has two AUX sends so I can do a mix-minus to two different computers, one for the Skype and one for the call in line. I also have a XLR mic plugged into the mixer. There’s a USB cable that connects the main output of mixer to the 2nd iMac for the streaming and recording.

Skype runs on one iMac, and the soft phone, Shoutcast streaming, and recording run on another. I tried to get it all to run on one computer but I could never make that many audio channels play nice on one machine. The delays drove me crazy and it was impossible to get the volume to match. Taking it out to a mixer is the only way I found to make it work.

There is also an Asterisk PBX with a 20 channel DID that handles the call in number.

The Shoutcast server is fed with Nicecast and I use Audio Hijack Pro to record the feed off the mixer and I copy the recording to Garageband to do any editing and create the mp3.