sound

I made the mistake of putting my Wireless Go II mic transmitter in the same pocket as my iPhone for a recent video recording, and as a result, I had a lot of RF interference in the recorded track.

Thinking I could just use the nice feature of the Wireless Go II's built-in recording, I grabbed the track off the body pack itself—but found that it, too, had the RFI sound, meaning the iPhone's interference made it into the mic circuit itself, not just the wireless mic signal to my camera!

I tried Final Cut Pro's built-in voice isolation, and that helped mute the noise between speech, but during speech it was omnipresent.

I also tried accusonus' denoise plugin (RIP after accusonus was bought out by Meta), and it did better, but left the sound feeling 'watery'.

You can use the Dictation feature built into your Mac to transcribe audio files, and in my experience, it's been about 98-99% accurate, so it saves a lot of time if you want to index your audio files, or you need a transcript for some other purpose.

These instructions were last updated for macOS Monterey 12.4.

First, open up System Preferences, go to Keyboard, then the 'Dictation' tab:

Turn on Dictation, and when prompted, accept the terms for Apple's Dictation service. Also take note of the 'Shortcut' (e.g. 'press dictation key' or 'press control twice'. You'll use that to activate dictation later.

A few months ago, I decided to get more serious about my recording setup in my home office. I do a lot more screencasts both for my YouTube channel and for other purposes than I used to, and I can't stand poor audio quality. Therefore I finally decided to get some sound absorption panels for my office, rearrange furniture a little for better isolation, and—most importantly—buy a proper USB audio interface and microphone.

So, after purchasing and connecting a U-Phoria UMC202HD and an Electro-Voice RE320 microphone, I was quite pleased with the sound quality!

... or, Liturgical Music: Finding Hymnody to Enlighten the Mind and Lift the Soul

Having been a Seminarian for the Archdiocese of Saint Louis—an Archdiocese with great diversity in liturgical music, priestly ministry, and culture—I have had a great variety of liturgical experiences. Also, being a young adult with twenty-four years of musical listening habits under my belt, I've listened to a wide variety of genres, most especially alternative, classical, and pop music (with a bit of country music thrown in on the side). My most consistent favorite is soundtrack music (which can incorporate many of these styles in a single album).

A project on which I am proud to have worked is the recording and mastering of an album (pictured above) for a Seminarian rock band—I helped with everything besides the musical talent. (You can buy the album, Lost in Ecstasy, by the Priestie Boyz, on CDBaby or iTunes). I also had the privilege to work in radio engineering for five radio stations over the course of five years—two pop stations, one soft rock, and two AM/talk radio stations.

These experiences recently came to my mind simultaneously as I attended a youth-oriented Mass, at which many liturgical hymns (published in OCP) were sung with the accompaniment of two guitars, a drum set, and some percussion instruments.

In my analytical mind, I was using my mind's waveform analyzer (didn't know I had one of those until now!) to 'see' the music. What I saw made me think quite a bit about the different genres of music, and different purposes of music—especially liturgical music. In particular, I thought about the efficacy of different styles of music in worship, and how fitting (or unfitting) are different styles, especially for different audiences.