Aimed at all stargazers, the Virtual Planetarium video on Sky At Night magazine’s YouTube channel is a video guide to the best things to see each month in the night sky, with graphics put together by digital content producer, Adam Crute. Two expert amateur astronomers provide the audio with the recent assistance of two Audient Evo 4 Start Recording Bundles (EVO SRB) that made an instant improvement to the sound.
Respected astro-photographer Pete Lawrence (recognised by the Royal Photographic Society) and Paul Abel (theoretical physicist and director of the British Astronomical Associations Mercury & Venus Section) have been recording their half-hour script for each month’s Virtual Planetarium from their respective homes since the beginning of Covid-19 lockdown. ‘Paul and I have been recording the Virtual Planetariums for Sky At Night magazine for many years,’ Lawrence explains. ‘The requirement to record separately due to the pandemic however, posed real problems in terms of getting matched audio.’
It was Crute who first suggested using the Evo SRB bundles – as a sound recording specialist, he knew the benefits that they would likely bring. ‘We wanted a setup that would consistently improve sound quality, and be simple for non-sound recording specialists to set up and use,’ he says.
‘It used to be that barely a month would go by without there being some tricky issue to deal with in the Virtual Planetarium voice recordings. Sometimes the guys’ recording gain would be tiny, on other occasions it would be far too high. We would have issues with noise, faulty mics, faulty cables, handling noise – always something. To make matters worse, it’s the sort of job where redoing the recordings is rarely an option.’
Enter Audient’s Evo SRB bundle, which comprises the Evo 4 USB audio interface, a condenser microphone with shockmount, headphones and an XLR mic cable. A bundle was sent to each presenter. Lawrence says, ‘Installing Audient’s Evo 4 recording system at both sites solved these problems brilliantly. The Evo 4 is really simple to use and allows us to set identical base recording levels with just the press of a couple of buttons. As a result, despite neither of us being trained in sound engineering, our recordings are of sufficient quality to even satisfy audio mixing professionals. You can’t say better than that.’
Previously, they had been using standard voice recorders on their home computers – Lawrence runs a Windows machine and Abel a Mac. Being able to standardise the recordings and deliver consistently good audio has meant the finished video can be put together much more quickly and easily.
‘I’ve been really pleased with how much better things have become since switching to the Evo Start Recording Bundle,’ Crute concludes. ‘EVO’s clever Smartgain feature ensures the recording levels are set perfectly every time, and the quality of the mics, preamps and converters ensures the sound is always clean and consistent.’
More: www.audient.com
