UPDATE:
I’m an idiot, the problem WAS one of the cables, I somehow tricked myself into thinking I tested multiple ones when I didn’t. Have bought a new one and am resuming recording. Feel free to continue sending any advice regarding “micro pops” I can get sometimes, not sure if the source is natural or not, though that’s far less critical an issue.

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This is a quick update / post for advice. Last night I noticed two recording sessions I made for the next Game Dungeon episode ended up being severely flawed to the point I had to throw them out. What would happen would be my voice would be recording normally, then would suddenly cut out to drastically reduced volume. It has since stayed highly erratic. People have sometimes complained of crackling in the live video chats with fans, it’s possible that was a prelude to this. You can listen to a sample I recorded here:

Sample of recording screw-up

Feel free to email me with any suggestions if you’re knowledgeable with this sort of thing. I’m really stumped as to what the problem is.

THINGS I’VE TRIED SO FAR:
-Swapping different microphones
-Swapping different XLR cables
-Trying microphone that doesn’t need phantom power
-Changing USB ports for my DAC
-Uninstalled / updated DAC drivers
-Trying different audio editors (Audition / Audacity)

POSSIBLY USEFUL INFORMATION:
-I am using a Focusrite Scarlett Solo DAC for my audio. I’ve owned it for about a year and a half.
-I’ve had a lot of “ghosts in the machine” with my USB ports on this motherboard in the past. It got so bad using external hard drives was simply unreliable (would reliably cause file copy errors) unless I plugged them into a different port. Whenever I plugged in a device like the webcam, I would often have to plug the device back into an old port for it to work again. It got so bad I bought a PCI-E USB 3.0 add on card, which solved the problem completely. Since I wasn’t experiencing any problems with my DAC, I left it plugged in to the motherboard. Since then, I’ve switched to the add-on card, but the problem persists.
-My motherboard is an Asus P8P67.
-In the past I used a Xonar DX soundcard. It had great sound, but would periodically give me severe driver problems to the point that I felt like it was unusable for the long term. I haven’t used it since I had the DAC
-I have not experienced any audio playback problems at any point in time, just recording.
-I am absolutely willing to buy new hardware if necessary, but I don’t want to waste my money if I have good equipment and made a bad diagnosis.

CURRENT PLANS:
-If I can find the right cables, I plan to use an old pre-amp and redirect everything using motherboard audio. If that works, the sound won’t be quite as good, but will hopefully be good enough to finish the next episode. If that doesn’t work, I’m completely out of ideas
-This has delayed the next episode by at least a day. If I get it solved today, then I’m predicting Wednesday for its release. If not, then everything is in limbo until this gets fixed.
-In the event motherboard audio works, I don’t want to do that as a long-term solution (I can hear the difference between dedicated soundcard / DAC audio v. motherboard audio). I’m certainly open to suggestions.

ADHD version: Ross is having for real audio problems. Will finish next Game Dungeon as soon as he gets a temporary fix.

COMMENTS

Here’s the latest chat with fans. I’m still working to move out of here, but that likely won’t happen until the end of the month. Besides the Game Dungeon episode I’m finishing up, there won’t be much in the way of videos this month since I’m going to focus mostly on the movie. Also, it’s possible the website may go down at some point this month (in fact, I hope it does so it can be updated), to use the new codebase. All it means is things will be locked down temporarily, we shouldn’t lose any data. I’ll have more details on that later.

COMMENTS

Things STILL not stabilized for me yet, but I should be available for the next videochat with fans. It will be at 6pm UTC on August 5th at twitch.tv/rossbroadcast. There will hopefully be a new Game Dungeon before the chat, but it’s too close to call at the moment. I still haven’t located my mic I normally use for the chats, but hopefully I’ll find it in time so the audio quality will be better.

Ask questions or topics to discuss here.

New Dead Games News episode! I realize only a minority of fans watch this, but this is the one gaming issue I just can’t ignore, so I’m trying to keep the torch lit on this until I can take some actual action against it. This episode is in the new format, where I only cover a couple topics, but go much more into depth on them. There’s currently been multiple events going on that don’t seem very significant now, but I think are a sign of things to come. I’m noticing that I’m taking a “future history” approach on these videos. Life is complicated when you’re a time traveler.

Next video should be Game Dungeon, I think it’s the sort of game that regular viewers expect from that show.

COMMENTS

Due to popular demand, I’m releasing a couple more clips related to the last Game Dungeon episode. The first is for an extra-high quality copy (the same version I uploaded to Youtube) of the episode. Due to this episode having lots of fast motion and high details, it compressed very poorly compared to pretty much every other episode. To put it in perspective, I used even higher quality compression settings than this on A New Beginning, and that was 1/20th the size this one was. So for people who are frustrated by the compression, here’s a downloadable version that has minimal artifacting:

Ross’s Game Dungeon: The Crew (x264 9.44GB MKV)

This is meant for personal viewing only. Please do not upload copies of this to Youtube or other streaming networks. However, as with all my videos, Fair Use purposes (reviews, parodies, derivative works, etc.) are of course fine.

The other request I received was for the green screen footage of my driving segment in the video. These were not made under ideal conditions. I had time pressure and had to record this in my currently evacuated room. You’ll see some shadowing that isn’t helpful, but people can monkey with it if they want. I’ve included 3 takes of the shot.

Green screen driving video (x264 44MB MP4)

Unlike the Game Dungeon episode itself, you can use this clip for anything you want, no restrictions. I’m not necessarily saying you SHOULD, but I don’t have a problem with it being used for whatever.

COMMENTS