I've received two comments recently about the audio quality of the podcasts that have been posted here recently. I wanted to take a moment to explain and solicitc your feedback.

We've been using a variety of tools that I'd consider to be at the consumer end of the spectrum for recording the podcasts recently. These have encompassed Skype, Gizmo and the like.

In the first VOIP ThinkTank podcast, we used Gizmo's conferencing capability in addition to a couple of quirks with home network resources and for one member, a cell phone connection. One that that seems quite notable is that on outbound calls to the PSTN from either Skype or Gizmo the gain amplification on PSTN-connected people is quite high. This high gain causes distortion of that individual's voice.

I do some audio editing to lower the distortion, but I haven't done any overly aggressive editing because I think it's important that you here the quality of the call based on the service used at the time. I always try to explain what mechanics were used for these calls. In part, I believe this is important so that you can hear for yourselves the distinction between the quality you might get using a consumer service as opposed to using iotum's great quality tools, or a product from Nortel, Cisco or the like.

We will settle in on a higher quality solution than some of what you've heard so far, but we want you to be able to hear for yourselves too. The intent was not to deliver sound studio quality at this point, but give you a sampling of some of what's out there.

The popularity of the podcasts may have given me a false sense of acceptance, but I've only heard two negative comments about quality so far. Please do share your comments as we explore these different approaches to recorded calls.

Thanks!