Jake

IDLE THUMBS KICKSTARTER!

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That's my question as well. I love Idle thumbs, and everything they produce and represent about gaming, but how can they possibly spend that much money responsibly? What do the fans get out of that?

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But if they hire Nick away from Bethesda who will manage the community?

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But if they hire Nick away from Bethesda who will manage the community?
It would be a lawless wasteland on those forums! Cats and dogs living together! Mass Hysteria!

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It would be a lawless wasteland on those forums! Cats and dogs living together! Mass Hysteria!

You don't visit the official Bethesda forums do you? It's already all of that.

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Oh, hey! Dudes! Now that you have $100,000, could you please make the podcast stereo? It's a huuuuuge boost to voice clarity.

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Oh, hey! Dudes! Now that you have $100,000, could you please make the podcast stereo? It's a huuuuuge boost to voice clarity.

What do you mean by this? Are you asking us to up the bitrate? Why would stereo make voice clarity any different?

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I hope you're not implying that you want one guy talking in my left ear and another talking in my right.

That shit drives me bonkers!

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In the sense that both channels, left and right, output the same thing.. I guess it is mono? This isn't the 60's, so no.. please don't blast Chris into my right and Jake into my left ear.

Although, I now I have an image in my head of Chris, Jake and Sean running back and forth between two speakers at a party marveling at the stereo mix, like the Beatles.

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I never had any problems with the voice clarity in any of the podcasts. On that note, I remember there was a reader mail once that said they couldn't tell the difference between Jake and Nick's voices, which I thought was weird because they sound pretty distinct.

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What do you mean by this? Are you asking us to up the bitrate? Why would stereo make voice clarity any different?

No, I mean make it stereo. It makes a ton of difference! You are using several mikes, right? This means you can place different voices in different places in the stereo image. One guy a bit to the left, one near the centre, one a bit to the right... It makes it a whole lot easier to understand what everybody is saying especially when several people talk at once. It also makes it a lot easier to differentiate between talkers.

I've done some transliteration of conversations for a course. It's a huge pain to begin with, but man is it difficult with a mono source... Stereo makes all the difference. Not that anyone will be transliterating the podcasts, but stereo really makes a difference in clarity.

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No, I mean make it stereo. It makes a ton of difference!

I personally don't believe that but it would be interesting to hear one episode that was stereo. Can you point to other podcasts that are stereo?

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Worst idea. Please don't do this.

Agreed. Especially given fairly common issues with ipods in which the left side has a lot of issues due to the jack slipping inside the casing. I have a 5 year old ipod because I can't afford a newer mp3 player, and despite cracking it open and manually re-adjusting the headphone jack whenever this gets to be overbearing, at the best of times I don't have a reliable left channel. The podcast being stereo would pretty much make it not worth listening to for me as I'd only be able to reliably hear half of it. As I've given more money to starting it back up than I really should have, I'd appreciate being able to listen to it.

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Yeah... please don't do that. It's just fine the way it has been.

I assume the 100k is going to more Wizard songs, by the way. 800% more Wizard.

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Thumbs in stereo.

I can imagine this sounding great. I actually don't understand why some people are so (angrily) opposed to it - the ability to localize sound should indeed help with understanding and differentiating the speakers. And it won't be/should be (at least as I understand it) that noticeable - very very small differences in timing and volume between left and right, no? And our fantastic brain does the trick in the background.

If you only have one ear, you just miss out on one dimension of the soundscape, but nothing else (mono again, but not like you don't hear someone - or notice the mono-ness). Or am I completely wrong with my understanding of stereo here?

(Worst idea? I mean, what about: Lets use dogs instead of people to moderate the cast. Dead dogs. And put the mikes underwater. Those are bad ideas. At least for a podcast about video games.)

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Yeah, the way I understood it, brkl wasn't suggesting that the any one of the voices would be entirely in one of the channels. Of course you wouldn't miss half the cast if your portable media player sucked. I don't listen to podcasts so I don't know how well this has been implemented elsewhere (or indeed if it is even worth a shot), but I don't see why this is so utterly horrible idea to consider.

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I honestly thought it was stereo already. In my ear-mind, Chris is in the right, Jake to the left and Nick/Famous in the middle.

This news will change how I hear-see forever.

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I personally don't believe that but it would be interesting to hear one episode that was stereo. Can you point to other podcasts that are stereo?

I dunno, I don't listen to podcasts apart from this one. They don't really advertise whether they are mono or stereo, and then I wouldn't know how they are recorded and mixed.

I'm pretty surprised at the reaction here. I (obviously) never meant one speaker would come 100% from one speaker and another would come 100% from the other. The difference only needs to be subtle for your brain to sort out the different positions of the speakers. I don't see how this concept is controversial.

My girlfriend's iPod at least has an option for mono audio, so it's not like that wouldn't still be an option if you really needed to have mono.

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I'll acknowledge a possibility of it not being completely terrible if it were very subtle, but I'm skeptical. Every time I've heard a podcast that did stupid shit with stereo, it was annoying and made me want to listen to it less (and that's in the best-case scenario of having two functioning ears and speakers). It's possible that those podcast mixers just didn't know what they were doing, but even if it were done well I can't imagine it adding much.

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Obviuosly we're talking about subtle positioning here, not shifting everyone to their own earbud. I think it would sound pretty swell.

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I'm very skeptical of the Stereo thing at the moment considering I've never once had an issue with quality or clarity. For that reason, "why fix what isn't broken?". Granted, having said that, using subtle MANUAL voice channel panning will trick our brains into thinking there is multiple people in a virtual space, which actually can work great as well, but it has to be subtle, and... well, is it necessary?

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No, I mean make it stereo. It makes a ton of difference! You are using several mikes, right? This means you can place different voices in different places in the stereo image. One guy a bit to the left, one near the centre, one a bit to the right... It makes it a whole lot easier to understand what everybody is saying especially when several people talk at once. It also makes it a lot easier to differentiate between talkers.

I've done some transliteration of conversations for a course. It's a huge pain to begin with, but man is it difficult with a mono source... Stereo makes all the difference. Not that anyone will be transliterating the podcasts, but stereo really makes a difference in clarity.

Have you ever listened to an actual radio show, be it terrestrial or satellite?

They don't do this.

Podcasts are essentially talk radio shows to begin with. There's no need to complicate it. Asking for stereo input from a quality standpoint is superfluous, and as for the function of one channel to the next, how is that going to better the experience of hearing guys fart around about video games?

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