Cynthia's Graduation

Volumes Fixed

The most recent Curmudgeon's Corner is now fixed. Well, it ain't a masterpiece, but it is a lot better than it was.

If anybody tried to listen and gave up because it was unlistenable, force your podcast catching software to download it again and you should be good to go. Apologies for the problem.

For anybody who cares, the issue is with Garage Band's Autonormalize option, which is supposed to BOOST the volume to a normalized level if the highest volume in your audio is lower than full volume. For whatever reason, it instead decided to dampen the volume. And for that matter just completely ignore the differing volumes I'd put on different tracks, the filters I had in place, etc. I turned that off and the results were once what I actually heard while editing in Garage Band.

Now, having said that, there was still an issue with my voice quality in the second half, as when I dropped Cynthia and went solo, unbenounced to me it stopped using my headset mic and started using the built in mic. But I knew that already when I was editing.

I'd always basically trusted in the past though that what I heard in Garage Band was basically what would be in the output once I exported. Guess I shouldn't trust that. Bleh.

Also, let me just say, trying to troubleshoot and adjust things in Garage Band over a slow VNC connection from the other side of the continent from my desktop is a major pain. This is something I will try to avoid in the future.

Electoral College: South Carolina Strengthens for McCain

A new poll in South Carolina... only the second poll there so far this election season... moves McCain's lead in South Carolina to more than 5%. This moves it from my "Lean McCain" category to "Weak McCain" and takes it out of the swing state category.

Current Summary:

McCain Best Case - McCain 313, Obama 225
Obama Best Case - Obama 336, McCain 202

And if everybody gets their leans (and Obama gets DC) - Obama 277, McCain 261