wHO ARE WE?
Technology Distilled is the third incarnation of what started out as the Surfacesmiths Podcast. The show's hosts, Colin and David Smith (aka the Surfacesmiths) decided to create the show at the very first Microsoft Ignite Conference in Chicago in May of 2015.
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We record the show wherever we are which most often happens to be in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada however some shows have been recorded in remote locations such as Japan, Seattle, Barbados and Australia.
Theme Music
The music you hear at the beginning of our episodes has varied since we started. We have used several Creative Commons and other royalty free pieces. Starting in episode 013 we have been using a track created specifically for us based on the Windows startup sounds. It was created by Rob from the Failed Musicians Podcast he named it Turk Cell but we call it the Surfacesmith’s theme. The current theme is an instrumental version of an old Irish song called Whiskey in the Jar using an arrangement very similar to the Metallica version of the song provided to us by Veppa Music.
Studio Setup
We’ve used several different setups over the years. Our current rig is a Behringer UFX-1204 Mixer/interface that supports multi-track. In the studio, Colin uses either a Shure SM68 or Sennheiser MD46 while David uses an AudioTechnica BPHS1 Broadcast headset. We record using Reaper into a Surface Pro 3.
We don’t add effects or intro and outro music in post production. In fact we try to minimize editing as much as possible. We prefer to drop sound effects into our recordings using a soundboard running Jingle Palette on a Surface Pro 2 and we sometimes run a mix-minus on one of our cell phones or a Surface Book 2 if we have remote guests.
We still use our Zoom H5 for mobile recording as well as a Shure X2U.