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A Look At The New RØDECaster Pro II with Jonathan Swenson · Buzzcast

0:00
Jordan: I can't get over how much the universe didn't want this episode happen. I know.
0:03
Jordan: It's like just one one thing after the other. And it's so funny because Alvin and Kevin before they like last week when I got sick, they were like, well, we'll just record the Buzzcast episode. I was like, no, no, I've got it. It's fine.
0:15
Jordan: It's fine. Go to London. They'll be great. I've got control.
0:18
Jordan: Everything's fine. Yeah. And then like, everyone just starts like dropping like flies and not who was supposed to co host with us. He and his whole family got really sick. And then I'm still sick from last wee k. And
0:35
Jonathan: I was driving home from work and all of a sudden not feeling super hot. And I'm like, oh, no,
0:41
Jordan: you can't back out on me. This can't be a solo show.
0:44
Jonathan: I got you. I got you.
0:46
Jordan: You know if there's anything I've learned from being a theater major is that the show must go on. So 5-6-7-8! So today's guest co host on Buzzcast is fellow Facebook group moderator, Jonathan Swenson. So, Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on Buzzcast and helped me out.
1:10
Jonathan: Hel lo, thank you. It is super exciting to come on.
1:13
Jonathan: I've been in the Facebook group for so long and listening to Buzzcast more and more frequently. So this is super exciting.
1:21
Jordan: I'm super excited. It's such a bummer because I was hoping that this could be like a Mod Squad (that's what we call the moderator group) I was hoping to be a Mod Squad hangout sesh this episode, but yeah, the world. Everyone's down for the count. Yep. You have a couple podcasts?
1:42
Jonathan: Sure I have. I'm starting to unify them under the brand name of Halfwit Podcast, love it. And we have a Halfway History, which was the first show that we started. And now we have Halfwits and Failed Crits, which is an actual play podcast.
1:56
Jonathan: So I've got two very different genres that I'm juggling. So yeah,
1:59
Jordan: Halfwit History I have listened to and I really enjoy that show. It's really cool.
2:02
Jordan: Because I think one of the things that's super interesting about you and I love hearing your stories about stuff is that you have taken podcasting and you've kind of been pivoting into like a voice actor role. So what was that like for anyone that's listening and is thinking like, I don't really get a voice like I've had the voice for radio, like maybe I could do that do video games and do voiceovers. So what is your journey into getting into that and like,
2:29
Jonathan: So it's a tangled web of even how I got into podcasting to begin with, because the Halfwits and Failed Crits was not intended to be a podcast. I had bought a Yeti so that I could record the games that we were playing, so that I didn't have to take physical notes to listen back to what we had done the previous game, because it's an actual play like Dungeons and Dragons podcast. So I was just recording us playing.
2:57
Jonathan: And then because we had the Yeti, my wife was like, let's make a podcast because she started listening to podcasts on like, what do we want to do when we just she's a historian. So we settled on that I'm a half wit very easy. So we started making that podcast and then I wasn't progressing as fast as I wanted to. And I'm like, I need more editing practice, just in general. I'm just going to take the the notes that I was recording from our other game and start editing them just so that I can get more time under the belt because I've never done anything like this. So then eventually, I'm like, I've got a bunch of these edited, that half of history is doing okay, this could be a podcast, too. So I started doing that. And by that point, I was like, Okay, this sounds terrible. Having a Blue Yeti, in an untreated room with six people screaming at it. This is awful, just absolutely awful.
3:44
Jonathan: And it is up so people can still listen to that hot garbage. But that is like my upbringing of learning how to do sound design is through there. And just editing and podcasting. So eventually, I had to ditch the Yeti that was not sustainable for keeping that goal.
4:04
Jordan: As you do when you grow as a podcaster. You ditch the Yeti.
4:08
Jonathan: Yeah, that's that is 100% the path that everyone should take. Alright, feelings about the Yeti. Yes, you other people. But anyways, I needed to buy a really big interface. And I needed to buy six microphones so that we could keep going. And I ended up just having this whole like studio setup. And at that point, I'm like, I like doing this. I want to transition to maybe doing podcasting full time at some point. But in order to make that go faster, I feel like I need to have something else that I can do with all of this money that I've sunk on all this equipment is pretty much what most voice actors do is I like anime. I like video games.
4:45
Jonathan: I could do that. And I'm like, Well, I got all the equipment.
4:49
Jonathan: So it's not like I have to invest again. I was wrong.
4:51
Jonathan: Podcasting equipment is not good enough. For commercial voiceover equipment, but it was a great way for me to get started in trying. So yeah, just kind of they describe, like playing Dungeons and Dragons is kind of analogous to audio booking where you're not like really delving into the character and all that stuff. So I'm like, Okay, I've got, I've got something and now I need to build upon it. And I ended up taking a class. I don't know how I got into it, because apparently, it's very difficult to get into with Crispin Freeman, who's been in a whole wealth of anime and video games.
5:31
Jonathan: And he tore me down to my very core, and I was like, Man, I want to do this again. And then that's just that's when I decided, yep, going into voice acting. This is this is what I got. What do I got to do to do this, right? Because I disappointed Crispin and I need to not disappoint Crispin next time. See, that's
5:50
Jordan: how you know that something's a passion is when it really hurts you. And you're like, Yeah, let's go again. It'd be more
6:00
Jonathan: like starting halfway to history. And it because I work full time as a quality engineer. And especially back then when I was at a abusive company, I was not getting home in order to record or edit the podcast until like, nine or 10 o'clock at night, so and I was not used to editing at all. So I was spending until two in the morning learning how to edit. So yeah, I'm glad those days are behind me. But you got to go through some stuff when you're just hold throwing yourself at a new passion.
6:33
Jordan: There's a lot of exciting stuff that has been happening. Alban and Kevin were a little sad that they couldn't be on this episode because of the new Buzzsprout ads rollout.
6:41
Jordan: And so luckily, they were able to record a bonus episode that we dropped Monday.
6:47
Jonathan: That's actually one of the first things that I ever talked to Travis about when even before I was a moderator, I just kind of like shot him a message because he was doing stuff in the Facebook group. And I'm like, it would be really cool if there was a way for us to promote other Buzzsprout podcast very easily. And then like Audrey IO, like, filled that gap. And I was like, but I still wish it was the Buzzsprout thing. And then that kind of popped up very fast. And I was like, yeah, that is what I've wanted. This is super cool. I can't wait to check it out.
7:15
Jordan: Us being involved in the Buzzsprout like Facebook community, there's so many people that are just constantly posting for like years begging for the ability to have mid roll ads. And you know, when I found out that Buzzsprout was dropping this, it's very, very exciting.
7:29
Jordan: And it's kind of a bummer for some of the podcasts that are a little bit smaller than, you know, the 1000s I think I think that one of your podcasts is just barely out of reach, isn't it?
7:42
Jonathan: We haven't uploaded an episode for halfway history in a few months, because we're trying to create a really backlog.
7:48
Jonathan: That's one of the things I super regretted. And we just decided to sit down and do it just make a backlog just don't worry about publishing. And even without publishing, we're like less than 50 listens away every mom. And I'm like, Oh my God, I want to start publishing again. So close. Yes. So close. They
8:05
Jordan: have that. And then there's also the time limit that some people are a little bummed about but you know, yeah, it's in beta. So we'll see what happens.
8:13
Jonathan: I think all of it makes sense. So even though it's currently repressing me, I think it makes sense. I understand. I think the one thing that I really love about how they approached it was like, or at least from my understanding of the episode, and from just like us chatting and everything. It sounds like it's focused on promoting other Buzzsprout podcasts as well, which I love.
8:33
Jonathan: That aspect is like lifting each other up. It's not just like, here's mid rolls, throw whatever as you want in them right now.
8:40
Jonathan: It's, it has a focus on podcast centric advertising, which I love.
8:46
Jordan: Yeah, so if anyone hasn't listened to that bonus episode that was dropped, it's called Buzzsprout ads have arrived in about 30 minutes long. And Alvin and Kevin deep dive into the newest Buzzsprout feature Buzzsprout ads, and they go into detail about how it works. And it's Game Changing effect on podcast monetization.
9:03
Jordan: And it really is game changing for Buzzsprout podcast, so I'm very excited about this.
9:09
Jonathan: I can't wait to try it out.
9:14
Jordan: Jonathan, do you have an apple podcast subscription account for your podcast? No, I don't you don't?
9:20
Jonathan: Neither of my podcasts do very well on Apple currently.
9:23
Jonathan: So I haven't invested time in it.
9:24
Jordan: Oh my gosh, mine either.
9:24
Jordan: It's so weird. But I do have Apple podcast subscriptions. And it works really well. It's surprising because I don't do well on Apple. But I actually just went and checked I have like over 50 subscribers on my apple podcast subscriber. That's cool. I know. I thought it was 20. I said 20 On a previous thing, because that shows how much I checked that I don't check it very much. I was like, Oh, whoops. But I have it and I have to be honest, even though I really love the apple podcast subscription is kind of a pain in the butt because uploading the bonus episodes to the Apple podcasts dashboard. It's a sort of tedious process is uploading the episode you have to like go through a bunch of pages and confirm information like yes, this audio is like subscriber only always yes, this episode drops at this time or publish immediately or schedule for a future date. And then you have to like upload the episode file, which takes four ever Yeah. And then they process the audio file, which takes even longer, and then you'll save it. And then even after you save it, you're still not allowed to publish it until like a while later. So I know, it's very clunky. So what ends up happening is it like logged me out of my apple podcast dashboard or something like that. Or sometimes I'll like, walk away and make dinner and forget that I have the episode processing. And then it'll be like, couple days later, I'm like, why is that bonus episode not dropped on my feed yet? And then I'll go look. And it's like, I didn't push the publish button after it saved and processed.
10:59
Jonathan: That's so much extra time.
11:01
Jordan: It's so much time. Yeah.
11:01
Jordan: So Apple announced sometime, I think in the last week or so that they are doing a new Apple podcasts delegated delivery. And what that means is that Apple is partnering with certain podcast hosts. And they're opening up their API so that the podcast hosts can create a way for their users to publish that Apple podcast subscriptions content directly from the host. So that means we can skip all that craziness.
11:35
Jonathan: Yeah, so exciting. And Buzzsprout is really good about getting stuff up fast, like one of my shows is sometimes three hours long. And it's it's never long before it's totally published on the Buzzsprout end.
11:44
Jonathan: So very, very excited for everyone using Apple to get a much quicker way through there.
11:52
Jonathan: Because it's the same thing.
11:52
Jonathan: When you were talking about that it's like the same thing as managing multiple social media accounts. It's just such a time suck.
11:59
Jordan: Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, the thing is, is like I said, you know, the process of uploading your bonus content, or your free content, or whatever, on Apple podcasts is so clunky and slow. It's just, I feel like there's a lot of hoops to jump through just to upload an episode. And basically, Apple announced that this new delegated delivery system allows creators to offer early release content, add free shows, and bonus episodes for listeners using Apple podcasts. And this is supposed to roll out in the fall, I don't think that Buzzsprout will be dropping all those things because we make it as easy as humanly possible to do podcasting. And so that means that everything is very simple, and streamlined and minimalistic. So if we have all of these things at one time, I think that it might be a little clunky. So I think that there's going to be a lot of considerations put in to what people will actually use, what podcasters actually need, and what the majority of people do use Apple podcast subscriptions for. So I don't think that there'll be rolling out all that stuff at once, they'll probably start with what the most important thing is and then make sure that it works. I kind of picture it in this could completely be wrong. This is just my imagination is that you can upload your episode and there'll be like a little checkbox that will say subscriber only content, I don't know something like that.
13:25
Jonathan: That would be neat. I wasn't even thinking about it that way, like where it's on. On the episode itself, I was still thinking of it kind of like a submission portal like you would go there. But you I think you have a pretty good point of just making it right on when you upload an episode. Normally, that would definitely speed that up. What I was thinking about is like, as you were mentioning, all these different little buttons, you have to click in everything I would almost expect Buzzsprout to have almost like a disclaimer, when you go to a page that has this is this is how you would upload your your stuff. And the Buzzsprout interface would actually input all of that stuff for you automatically. Like here's a disclaimer of all the things you must do. We're going to click all the buttons for you. All you have to do is tell us which episode needs to go there.
14:10
Jordan: I love it. Yeah. And I see it kind of working as you know how when you create your podcast in Buzzsprout. And you have the settings that are just true. You know, you can say that your podcast is bi weekly or weekly or whatever you you can say who the host is like there's just information that you have that is automatically populated into every episode. And I think that you could do the same thing. But yeah, I could see it getting like automatically populated and I think it would just be so much easier because we're already used to help us where it works where we're used to how you schedule episodes, and I'm really hoping that this also makes other premium podcast providers do the same thing.
14:50
Jordan: Yeah, to where they will work in integrate with the actual like podcast host because it is so much easier. or, and I think just having like the least amount of friction possible is actually going to make more people want to utilize your platform in monetizing their podcast with bonus content.
15:11
Jonathan: What I've heard everyone talk about, it's not too difficult in Patreon. But like Patreon, you have to set up a separate RSS feed so that everybody can access it. It would be great if you could just tell your podcast host that this is exclusive content for this platform and just have them linked and not have to worry about oh, now I've got another RSS to manage and Patreon. And so you could just do it all from your host.
15:34
Jordan: That was super nice. I wonder if that would someone who's like actually tech savvy is probably screaming at their phone right now. Absolutely. But I wonder if there's any way to have the regular episodes, and the bonus episodes just automatically populate into whatever podcast app you're using. Like if that would work that way where it was just nice and cohesive and just kind of like layered with your regular bonus episodes together?
15:56
Jonathan: Yeah, we're even like, you know, we have the drop down right now for Full Episode Trailer bonus. Like, it could just be Yeah, bonus Apple bonus, Patreon bonus Super Cast. And just be that simple. Maybe
16:09
Jordan: that would be so cool.
16:09
Jordan: So yeah, I'm really excited for when that delegated delivery, integration is dropped, because I will be one of the first users of that, for sure. Because I love my apple podcast subscription. So if anyone is wanting to give that a try, you can go to your apple podcast dashboard, and you sign up, I think it's $20 a year to sign up for that. So make sure you can make that money back when you do set up a subscription plan. But Buzzsprout actually has a really great YouTube video that they did recently about how to set up your apple podcast subscription account. And so I will link to that in the show notes. Get the tea bags. Spotify is in hot water.
16:58
Jonathan: Oh man.
16:59
Jordan: Yeah. So Twitter kind of like erupted for podcasters with Spotify screenshots because Spotify placed, quote, unquote, sponsored banners on some of the podcast pages for a bourbon whiskey. And so it came out that they had placed it on a podcast for recovering alcoholics. And then also on podcast for children.
17:22
Jonathan: Yeah, that's a I mean, that's one of the reasons why the Buzzsprout guys don't have their own stuff on there, because Spotify just kind of has control over what they're going to do with your podcast. Yeah, it's, oh, I don't like that.
17:33
Jonathan: That's got to be triggering for some people and inappropriate for others.
17:36
Jordan: Pod news did say that a Spotify spokesperson said, you know, it was a mistake, and we've removed it. It's fine.
17:44
Jonathan: Yeah. Was it a mistake? Or was it your algorithm for advertising happened to do something egregious, and it wasn't that you were trying to prevent it from doing that thing? It just hadn't happened yet.
17:55
Jordan: That's kind of the thing is like, either they're saying that it was a mistake and saving face or they did a rollout that just went horribly wrong. And they got caught, right. Yeah.
18:05
Jordan: And so I'm hoping this error is part of a testing of like a profit sharing rollout, especially since it has like that sponsor thing.
18:15
Jonathan: And it's right underneath where the where the cover shows up and everything.
18:17
Jonathan: It's one of the first things you see when in all the screenshots that I was looking at of people posting their pages. It's very front and center.
18:26
Jordan: Yeah. And you know, it's interesting, because advertisers, you know, when I work with advertisers, you do not say that your podcast is sponsored by an advertiser unless the advertiser has approved your Pontiac sponsored by them. Yeah. Cuz
18:38
Jonathan: that has like some two way street implications of not only are you getting money to advertise this product, it's they agree with your product that you're making enough to do that. So they would have to have like whole teams of people just sitting down and making sure that your podcast was good from front to back before they did that. So they don't
18:57
Jordan: Yeah. And I think that it really ticked off the advertiser too, because this wild turkey bourbon banner is what went off to everybody. And they said on Twitter that Spotify is advertising system incorrectly pushed wild turkey ads to multiple podcasts on the platform. And they did acknowledge that Spotify took responsibility for the incident and removed it,
19:19
Jonathan: but it looks like also here they they've mentioned that they have paused all media with Spotify until an investigation has been completed as to how this happened, which is honestly very cool while Turkey but yeah, probably pretty detrimental to whatever Spotify is trying to push right now.
19:34
Jordan: Yeah, for them saying that they've paused on media with Spotify. So they pulled their advertising from Spotify as a result of this. I assume.
19:39
Jordan: Spotify is being very cagey about how this happened. And they're not really saying as to whether it was an intentional thing that went wrong, or if they just were working on a project and it accidentally got pushed out. But it's interesting because I've seen sponsored banners on podcasts owned by Spotify such as parcast and gimlet like I've seen the sponsored theaters, so
20:05
Jonathan: I don't know. Yeah, it's really odd that it made it to a whole collection of other people that are, you know, not partnered with Spotify as well.
20:11
Jonathan: Very interesting that it made it down to like the indie level and really cause an upset there.
20:17
Jordan: Yes, exactly. Exactly.
20:17
Jordan: So along with that Spotify also experienced an influx of hundreds of spam podcasts. And of course, they're from free podcast hosting companies, as always, yeah. Such a problem.
20:30
Jordan: Well, it's because it's free.
20:32
Jordan: And you know,
20:33
Jonathan: you can get anything on there very quick. Yeah. I ended up looking at like some of those like, sex worker ads. And I'm like, Oh, this is not what I expected this to be. And it's so much worse than I expected to be, is just straight up spam is just spam podcast feeds. It's wild,
20:50
Jordan: like a crazy person. I actually went and tried to like actively finding those. Which, boy, that was dangerous. I could have gone to like some really dark places. But I did try finding them. I just wanted to see like what it was about. I was just curious what those podcasts were because I get it if there's popup ads and stuff like that, but like, how are they advertising sex workers with podcasts?
21:12
Jonathan: It is literally a directory like a phone directory, like audio directory.
21:15
Jonathan: Yeah. So it's a bunch of them are like find local escorts in Dubai, find local escorts in X country. And then it's just a list of escort services that they read.
21:31
Jordan: That's terrible marketing. It's so bad. It's terrible.
21:35
Jonathan: Yeah, I was I was really shocked because I'm like, oh, you know, people just not liking that. Like sex workers are like hopping on the platform. Because like, I know, a few like sex work shows like, I think it's called next on stage one. That's very different from what's actually happening, which is, here's a list of people to call.
21:51
Jordan: I was picturing it to be more like, you know, those one 800 numbers like those those hotline numbers, I was expecting it to be more like that, where like, if you clicked on the podcast, it would be like, you've reached hot call girls for a good time call this number. I was expecting something like that, not just for call girls in
22:12
Jonathan: Well, I only ended up finding like two of them. So maybe some of them are smarter than the like two that I found.
22:19
Jordan: Yeah, I was really expecting it to be more like the like just a podcast version of like a hotline. thing. That's
22:27
Jonathan: like a Girls Gone Wild ad type thing where it's like crazy girls, girls girl, blah, blah, you know, that kind of stuff. And at least the the like one that I found. It was not that. I just it was so weird.
22:41
Jordan: They were doing it. I mean, it's spam. So like, obviously, they were like mass producing it. So I'm sure whatever you heard was what was being published? Yeah, just some
22:48
Jonathan: mass produced AI voice that just reads off some numbers for you to call.
22:53
Jordan: That's funny. Yep. Yeah.
22:53
Jordan: So the crazy thing about all of this is that it's completely avoidable. Like it could have been avoided by Spotify, but they don't automate the approval of their podcasts.
23:04
Jonathan: Yeah. So like looking at the article, they mentioned that rss.com has a way of filtering out all of this already, all the different spam.
23:10
Jonathan: And I would imagine that there's quite a bit of other podcast hosts that do this as well, I believe Buzzsprout does as well, when we were we brought this up.
23:22
Jonathan: But what the way that rss.com Does it is they have some sort of meta tag that they implant into their RSS feed that tracks how frequently the podcasts are uploading new episodes. And if they aren't uploading new episodes, they have a series of different flags that this little piece of metadata will send off to them. And what they do is while this tag is setting off the little metadata red flag, it kind of pushes down the discoverability a little bit until it starts seeing more activity on the RSS feed. And then if it never comes back, if the attribute never gets filled up, again, whatever tag they're using, then it flags a human essentially for review. So it says, Okay, this is a podcast, here is the score that we use, they actually have this whole matrix now that I'm scrolling down a little bit further about what constitutes spam versus not spam. They call it the confusion matrix. And it has Yeah, they call it the confusion matrix. It has a predictability label. And they have a fairly high precision number. It says that, like they're aiming for something to come out of this matrix with a 95% score. And if it's any lower than a 95% score, then it flags it for human review as spam. Oh, oh, and then they can essentially just put someone on it. They open it up and it's pretty easy to detect these, these spam RSS feeds, so they just pop up. Someone looks at them. They click Review and they're done.
24:49
Jordan: Yeah, no, I mean, now that you explain that, to me, it does seem very absurd, that that is not something that Spotify implements.
24:57
Jonathan: It's another one of those things and I know that kinda gets talked about a lot on a bunch of different places. But when Spotify acquired anchor, they just decided that anything that goes into anchor goes and anything that goes from anchor to Spotify, they just want to make that transition super easy.
25:12
Jonathan: So that more people use anchor and it's working. But this is one of the downsides is they're not paying attention to their integration with anchor. And not only that, like when anchor used to be separate from Spotify, they were having issues like this, too. So it's really interesting that Spotify has essentially acquired anchor added new features to it that make it more appealing for somebody to join anchor, but they're not doing what seems like the bare minimum that other podcasting hosts are doing to make sure that they're providing quality content with their podcasting and like high quality content. I just mean stuff that is actually a podcast and not spam.
25:53
Jordan: Jonathan and I have been getting in a little bit of healthy competition over this newest game. You know, if you are a fan of Wordle nurdle like there's like Lord of the Rings.
26:10
Jonathan: Heard about that one?
26:10
Jonathan: Oh, you caught me off guard.
26:18
Jordan: Forever. There's also like, observable.
26:22
Jonathan: There's like some really crazy ones too, that are like I know there's one called Zillertal with like an X. And it has you solve 1000 wordles at a time at the same time. It is crazy.
26:35
Jordan: So there is a new Wordle for podcasters. And this is created by pod chaser called Poddle. This has turned into a little bit of a healthy competition between me and Jonathan. And it's a feud.
26:49
Jordan: There's a lot of like really angry gifs going around our chat room and stuff. But yeah, so Poddle. And what it is, is you go to poddle.podchaser.com.
27:05
Jordan: We'll have a link in the show notes. You get six guesses to guess the title of a podcast, they've pixelated the cover, it starts with 12 pixels. And then with each guess the pixels become more and more and more until the image of the cover art starts clearing up a bit. So do you have today's Poddle? 101?
27:25
Jordan: Poddle 101? All right, yeah. So what's your strategy on Poddle.
27:30
Jordan: Jonathan, I want to know,
27:31
Jonathan: my initial strategy is there is a color, what is the closest podcast I can figure to that color? I don't really pay attention to like, how the color varies because especially at this first step, it can be wildly different, very fast, and like how the pixels end up separating themselves. Yeah. So we're looking today, and it's a very brown, orange.
27:52
Jordan: I do have confirmation from a source about how it works
27:57
Jonathan: about how the squares work. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Finally, if anyone's already played this, you know, the frustration of looking at these seemingly completely random percentages that assigns you anytime you guess.
28:10
Jordan: This explanation is actually from the creator of Poddle. And they say that the podcasts are sourced from popular podcasts on Podchaser.
28:21
Jonathan: So that helps with what my strategy is because if I'm like, oh, man, I only know to orange podcast my first go is I go to top podcasts on pod chaser and scroll a little bit until I find something similar, I do
28:32
Jordan: the same thing. It feels like a little bit of a cheat, but you know, whatever. It also is helping us
28:37
Jonathan: find new cool podcasts. So I don't think it's cheating that bad. It's true.
28:41
Jordan: Also, when you guess a podcast name, there's percentages that pop up indicating how accurate your guest was. And the matches are based on how the words and characters you've used compared to the actual podcast name.
28:56
Jordan: Okay. So your results will display the percentage score for how close your guests is to the answer. And they gave an example. So the phrase the daily might get something like 40% for quote unquote, the and 60% for daily, or 100% for the daily, and the day's might get around 70% and the dailies might get around 90%
29:23
Jonathan: Okay, so it is very much based on the words you type. Yes.
29:27
Jordan: And it's actually like down to the letters a little bit too. Okay. So yeah, so that is how portal works. So if anyone has played it and been like, What the heck are these percentages? That's what that means. We both have not done our portal for today, Jonathan. So I was thinking maybe we can settle this once and for all, who is the better portal player? Oh, no. I'm gonna start with my first guest, which is I don't know because I'm seeing a lot of burnt orange and brown. Don't squares and don't know what this could be.
30:04
Jonathan: I'm gonna start with radio lab. It's not quite an orange but at least it's close to an orange.
30:09
Jordan: Yeah, like maybe some of the colors are like combining to be an orange.
30:14
Jonathan: I will say I was very wrong with a 15%
30:17
Jordan: blue. I don't think this is right but I'm going to try to live and die in LA. So the other thing that you have to do when playing Poddle is that you have to get it exact so double check your spelling double check your spaces and if it has with in it or podcast in it, because I was super upset one day when I knew what it was, but I didn't realize that podcast was actually like in the title.
30:43
Jordan: Okay, so to live and die in LA.
30:47
Jordan: Oof 13%
30:50
Jonathan: taken an early lead
30:55
Jordan: I submitted the left right game is my second guess.
30:59
Jordan: And I got I got it right you get that already? Dang it.
31:07
Jonathan: No Jordan one an amazing one the other day because the podcast art that Poddle gave us was actually an old podcast art of the show.
31:17
Jonathan: Yep. So there was no way that I would have ever found it.
31:22
Jonathan: Because it wasn't the current podcast art and Jordan got that one I think that's way more impressive than my like few scrolls
31:30
Jordan: I did get that one. It's a good podcast, too. It was Up and Vanished,.
31:34
Jonathan: Very close after they had The Vanished as the podcast as the Poddle podcast to it was wasn't it? We gotta start thinking about the ones that they give us and what could become a next
31:45
Jordan: Oh, and this is another one like the cover art says the documentary but the correct answer is The Documentary Podcast. So you got to be so careful about that. Yep. That's why I recommend looking up your guesses just to double check real quick that you do have it 100% Correct. But yeah, Poddle.podchaser.com. I am a huge fan of this game. I have a huge fan.
32:08
Jonathan: It's fun, it ruins friendships.
32:12
Jordan: We now hate each other.
32:20
Jordan: I actually thought that this was fake when I first saw it. There is a story that came out that a New Zealand retailer had listed images of the RODECaster Pro to under the name of quote unquote new item dash ETA TBC. Yeah, and RODE had not yet announced the new mixer. Somebody had screenshot the images of the new RODECaster Pro 2 that were on this New Zealand retailer's website. And looking at it.
32:50
Jordan: Yeah, I thought it was fake.
32:54
Jordan: Because it's just, true to RODECaster Pro, they're kind of famous for having all these like lights and bells and whistles.
33:03
Jordan: It looks very like futuristic.
33:03
Jordan: It's very neon. Yes. And I kind of feel like this new one is even more so like they leaned into that, didn't they? Yeah, absolutely.
33:13
Jonathan: They like all of the knobs have glowing lights around them now and I was 100% with you thinking that this was fake, especially like how aggressively this person on Twitter was like, throwing it around with the like, "you will not keep this a secret!" I'm like this has to be fake.
33:30
Jordan: Yeah. And I thought so too until RODE replied to them and said "thanks for spoiling all the fun. You're on our Naughty List."
33:38
Jonathan: Oh, I bet they're regretting that now.
33:42
Jordan: Well, the cats out of the bag and RODE has officially announced that they have a new RODECaster Pro Two and I don't know the official announcement is because of the week
33:53
Jonathan: it was very quick after Yeah, this was only like two or three days ago at most.
33:56
Jonathan: And I think I saw something about Sweetwater actually sent out like a little notification when it got posted, which was either yesterday night or this morning. So it sounds like they may have been pressured to push a little early.
34:12
Jordan: I'm actually really excited for the new RODECaster Pro Two, I did end up getting a RODECaster Pro for recording Buzzcast and stuff like that.
34:20
Jordan: And I was a little apprehensive at first you know, I always call myself the garbage millennial.
34:26
Jordan: I'm not tech savvy. I am not social media savvy. I don't like any of that stuff. And there's like a disconnect for me about technical stuff. And so I was really nervous about getting this RODECaster Pro because it looks really intimidating. But honestly the audio quality coming from the RODECaster Pro is just (chef's kiss) and I love it. So now am I a tech-head?
34:48
Jonathan: Ah, she says from her fancy Shure microphone.
34:52
Jordan: Have I been converted?
34:52
Jordan: I'm really excited about this RODECaster Pro Two, especially since it looks like it has like according to the dimensions listed, it has a smaller profile than the current RODECaster Pro which is ginormous.
35:08
Jonathan: Yeah, about an inch on two different sides, which is huge. That's a, that's a big difference between the size of the two.
35:14
Jordan: I think it's narrower too. But I did see that they've made it so that the touchscreen, which is five inch touchscreen, I see that they have elevated it, which is actually nice, because you don't have to, like lean up to look. So I don't know if that's included in the height description that they provided.
35:33
Jonathan: Oh, good point. Yeah, because that does take up quite a bit,
35:35
Jordan: it does take up a lot, which is actually pretty nice.
35:37
Jordan: But maybe making the RODECaster Pro Two, a little bit thinner, maybe that's to compensate for that elevated screen.
35:46
Jonathan: Yeah, I'm wondering if this height difference because they they've got two of the dimensions are about an inch shorter, some a little bit more.
35:52
Jonathan: And then one of the dimensions is barely shorter. So I'm wondering if they shrunk the base model a lot, and that they are including the height of the new touchscreen, and that's why it's coming out the same on that dimension. Yeah, I love that they did the angle thing too, not just for like easy viewing, but like it's a touchscreen. So it's like way more ergonomic do not have to like kick your hand over to like, try and touch everything to it's just right in front of your hand.
36:17
Jordan: Oh, yeah, I totally agree. Yeah, one of the things that I am a little apprehensive about is that they, and this is so stupid, but they moved the headphone jack from the front of the RODECaster Pro. And they moved it to the back. But the thing is, is that they no longer have the 3.5 millimeter and and now it's four quarter-inch headphone jacks in the back. So yeah, I'm gonna have to get an adapter now.
36:43
Jonathan: I don't love it either. Because like as a producer, you're the one who's most likely going to be wearing the headphones. And now your headphones need to be wrapping around the machine, which means you might be creating noise with your headphones tapping on it if you're not careful with like what kind of headphones you're using. Or if you're not using like a really long coiled pair of headsets. If you're just using like straight headphones, you might start getting some tapping, especially for some reason not using like a dynamic mic. If you're using a condenser mic, you'll probably hear your headphones against the device.
37:13
Jordan: Oh, yeah, I didn't even think about that. Yeah, I did not even think about that. Yeah, and having cords like wrap around, like, I'll have to get an extender for mine. I know that. Another thing that they added is an additional USB C and Ethernet port. Oh, what on earth would an Ethernet port be for?
37:32
Jonathan: Does that help you for like, call-in people, like, having a more reliable connection?
37:36
Jordan: That's interesting. That might be why that's added.
37:39
Jordan: That's a - that's a thought
37:41
Jonathan: because I know they do have the call-in feature on the existing one. But if they have that it might be a Wi Fi or Bluetooth or whatever. Maybe you can get a more reliable Wi Fi connection that way.
37:50
Jordan: Yeah. And I think that they are also they've also implemented wireless audio monitoring, because I don't think the current Pro has that.
37:55
Jordan: Do they know I don't, I don't think they do, which is really nice. So I mean, maybe yeah, maybe they removed the headphone jack, because everyone has wireless bluetooth headphones anymore. And so they were like, well, so future, we're moving forward to that.
38:11
Jonathan: Oh, they're processors way upgraded, they have better preamps too, which is huge.
38:14
Jonathan: What, what does that mean preamp is the reason why you would buy like a cloud lifter for your shirt. So like all of the interfaces come with certain quality preamps like I know, like the scarlet Focusrite that like Buzzsprout recommends a lot. It's good. But it is on the quieter side for preamps. So you do generally have to turn your gain up a lot. So I think the Scarlett only has like 50 decibels of gain, I think is what it is. So if their preamps are better than they may have like 60 or 70 decibels of gain, I wonder what they're at, which is huge for people trying to do things on a budget because like I know that I just got a nice new shirt sm 57 and it is definitely quieter recording than both my Neumann TLM 103 Which is way expensive, so it better be better. And then my budget ATR 2100 words are also louder than the short is, but I can boost the gain postproduction pretty well with the short because of how well the quality is. But it's always better if you can get a good loud first recording. Yeah, so that's actually huge. Like, I might be excited for this and consider switching out of my focus, right. The only thing that makes me not want to switch from the focus right is I've got one that has eight ports. And this only has four so like if I did switch to this, I wouldn't be able to have guests, but we've also never done that yet, so I might do it.
39:43
Jordan: You're just holding out on the potential guests that you may have in the future.
39:47
Jonathan: I know it's so tough.
39:47
Jonathan: Yeah, honestly, the most exciting part about this for me is the upgraded preamps because that means you're just gonna get a better quality recording off the bat and that is always what you need to aim for in any sort of sound media.
40:01
Jordan: Yeah. And they have here that there's also studio quality audio processing and effects like on the board that include the effects. Aural Exciter I haven't heard about that was an Aural Exciter because Aural Exciter sounds really naughty.
40:14
Jordan: Oh, the Big Bottom and Compellor, EQ, compression, pitch shift, robot effects, reverb delay, and more.
40:25
Jonathan: I would hesitate that if anyone buys these and has these features and everything, don't rely on the pitch shift.
40:32
Jonathan: Normally, it doesn't come out nearly as good as you would think. But I also haven't played with this Aural Exciter. So maybe maybe their pitch shift is better. But like I use Ableton as my DAW and my interface doesn't have any sort of pre or like during recording sound effects. So that's kind of neat too. But like the adding the reverb and everything is really nice, especially if you're doing this for voice acting, adding just like a tiny touch of reverb to all of your recordings makes it sound so much clearer and natural. Yeah, so I'd be really interested in seeing how that works.
41:05
Jordan: According to the road caster wet
41:15
Jonathan: brain is stuck on that Aural Exciter Yeah, it is. Nice and sleek. The size profile is just what I want.
41:24
Jordan: Am I gonna have to mark this episode as explicit?
41:37
Jordan: Oh, man, Jordan, you can't say Aural Exciter. Ugh fine, guys.
41:45
Jordan: According to the RODE website, the RODECaster Pro Two will go live in 18-17 days from the date of this episode dropping, you can get your RODECaster Pro Two.
41:54
Jordan: And you can actually pre order that now. And I will put a link in the show notes for you to go look at it looks really exciting.
42:04
Jonathan: It's very pretty.
42:05
Jordan: It's so pretty.
42:07
Jonathan: Now I'm looking at spending more money No.
42:14
Jordan: I was thinking it'd be really fun to wrap up this episode with a segment that I had actually talked to Jonathan about wanting to implement in Buzzcast. And that is bad podcast reviews. Yeah. So Alvin keeps insisting on reading podcast reviews, much to my dismay. And so I figure you know, what if you can't beat them, join them. So I thought it'd be really great to read bad podcast reviews. If you have a bad podcast review that just makes you chuckle go ahead and send it to me. My Twitter is@Jordanpods, J-O-R-D-A-N-P-O-D-S at Twitter and you can message me a screenshot of your funny bad review that I can read out I'd really like to just kind of like all of us revel in our misery together over these bad podcast reviews. So I'll start with mine. Okay, I've got a great bad podcast review for my podcast, Dreamful Bedtime Stories. So this podcast review is two stars. And it says,"Jordan Blair has a very sleepy voice. Perfect for bedtime. But it is not good for daytime." Two stars. For my bedtime stories podcast. I just kind of like picture her playing my podcasts and be like, "Ah, this isn't good for daytime! Two stars!"
43:42
Jonathan: I'm washing dishes. I can't fall asleep.
43:46
Jordan: You can't operate machinery with this podcast. Oh, man. All right. So what's your bad podcasts review?
43:56
Jonathan: I have a good bad one.
43:56
Jonathan: It's a five star. Well, the title is "hey, it's fine." So we're off to a good start. It is written by a user named thunderscrotum. Just to put that in perspective as well. And their five star review of my Halfwit History podcast was "I like listening to this in the bath." Yeah, I don't know how I feel about any of this.
44:30
Jordan: There's a guy with a username thunderscrotum listening to your podcast naked.
44:35
Jonathan: In the bath. He's like, "it's fine five stars."
44:39
Jordan: Oh. Well, I think that we are off to a really good start on the segment. So I hope that some of the Buzzcast listeners think of bad podcast reviews that they or maybe a podcast or friend of theirs have gotten in they've gotten a good laugh out of it. So go ahead and send to me. Again, that's at Jordan pods on Twitter and I would love to bring back the segment for some more bad review. I love it. Well, Jonathan, thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Buzzcast. I am really glad that you and I were healthy enough to make this episode happen.
45:20
Jonathan: Thank you so much for having me, Jordan. It was very, very fun.
45:24
Jordan: All right, well with that, thank you for listening and keep podcasting