The Housecast Sessions

The Making Of The Housecast Sessions

I get many emails asking how I produce the Housecast Sessions, so here’s a short guide to how I do them and what I use. First and foremost you need to start with high quality audio tracks, and all my music is either 320Kbs .mp3 files, .wav files or CD tracks. If working with vinyl then it is recored to .wav first and cleaned up (you may occasionally hear the odd vinyl sound in some of the tracks though).

All the Housecast podcasts are performed live using Traktor DJ Studio 3 running on an Apple Mac computer. The audio is externally routed out of Traktor on separate channels via a Hercules FW16/12 firewire audio interface running at 96Khz/24bit into a 5 channel mixing desk. I normally use 2 decks on Traktor but sometimes 3, and there is also a Pioneer CDJ 200 connected to the mixer (I also use the CD drive on the Mac to play CDs directly in Traktor). Each mixer channel has an FX send into a Korg Kaosspad 3 effects unit which is returned to a separate mixer channel. The Traktor decks are controlled using 2 EKS XP10 midi controllers. An AKG Perception 200 condenser microphone connects to the mixer via an ART V3 Studio MP valve preamp for voiceover.

DJ }Moose’s Studio

There are three stereo outputs from the mixer: the booth signal is routed to a pair of active studio monitors; the master output is routed to another Mac for live broadcast work only; the monitor output (at fixed line level) is routed into an Edirol FA101 firewire audio interface (again at 96KHz/24bit) connected to a Windows XP PC running Sony Soundforge 8. The whole Housecast is recorded in one take into Soundforge.

Close Up of Controllers and Mixer

When recording is complete the start and end of the audio is cleaned, any fade in or out added and set with two seconds of silence at each end. It’s then saved to disk (still at 96KHz/24bit, larger casts may have to be split in two to save at this resolution). The audio is then opened with T-Racks mastering suite which consists of a parametric EQ, tube compressor and multiband limiter chain. This is configured to produce a clean, consistent sound across the whole mix with a finished level of -0.5db (LOUD!). A listen through the audio is done at this stage to check for any glitches or artifacts introduced during mastering.

The mastered audio is then opened in Soundforge, reassembled if need be then rendered from a 96Khz/24bit .wav file into a 44.1Khz/16bit .mp3 file at 160Kbs. The final thing to do before uploading to the web server is to rename the file, write the ID3 tags and embed the cover art (I use iTunes for this). Once uploaded to the dj-moose.co.uk web server I create posts on this and the Zetcast site and ping the iTunes server to update the listings.

And that’s it – simple really! A one hour Housecast takes about three and a half hours to produce from start to finish (not including the initial track selection) but it’s an enjoyable process.