Production notes [OPTIONAL READING - SUPER LONG-WINDED]:

First, I am writing this from the perspective of speaking to people who have never heard Nerd Noise Radio before. I am the deeper of the two voices, and am NOT the voice you hear first. The voice you'll hear first is my co-host, Hugues (pronounced "Hugh"). Also, this episode has a [hopefully] "so bad it's good" little gag at the beginning that was mostly improvised and just "winged". The basic idea of the gag was Hugues', but it was only a minimally fleshed out idea that we mostly just ran with off the cuff. You can hear what very little planning we actually did for it in the outtakes section at the end of the episode (as well as our very non-standard censor sound)!

Second, let's make a distinction between "producing the 'ingredients' for the episode" and "producing the episode itself" (putting all those ingredients together and in place):

In the case of the latter, of actually making the episode itself, yes, this episode was produced entirely on the Steam Deck. I got started on that somewhere late in the 6pm hour the night before it was due, and got finished somewhere in the 3am hour that morning - which is about 5hrs later than I normally get to bed, and only about 3hrs before I had to be up and about for the day, and I'm in my 40s with a non-stop toddler in the house (who you get to hear deliver the sign-off). So was a total zombie yesterday, and am only "mostly recovered" this day after.

But in the case of the former, in the case of the production of the individual little bits and pieces I called "ingredients", the production of those were split various ways across four different devices, the Steam Deck only being a lesser player in that - and that's not counting the computer Hugues used to record his side of the conversation, which was definitely not a Steam Deck (though it is at least running Linux).

So, in terms of my goal / dream of doing an episode where every single little bit of every step was done entirely from the Steam Deck, well, this one isn't that one yet. But hey, it's a WONDERFUL step in that direction, isn't it?! 🥰

Lastly, now as for the quality of the job I did in production, I'm reasonably happy with it. It's not quite my absolute finest work, but is still degrees of magnitude better than the horrible production work found in my early days almost 6yrs ago. But it's important to note that I think it would've turned out absolutely no better nor worse had I done it on one of the other devices instead, since I used the same software (Audacity and Ardour), and used the same headphones and mic I would've used on any of them (though my voice was actually neither recorded nor edited on the Deck).

And what fairly gentle criticisms I might have of the production, 99% of that, I would lay at the feet of the headphones I used to hear what I was doing. I feel like my voice was a little too loud compared to Hugues' voice, and both of our voices (but especially mine) were a tad too bassy. Also, I feel like the music-only moments are just a touch too loud relative to the talking portions. All of which my headphones convinced me otherwise of while in the process of making the decisions, and I only noticed afterwards when I listened on other equipment. None of these things do I lay at the feet of the Steam Deck, though. In fact, except for the last of them, none of those production moments even took place on the Steam Deck.

The only other production notes I would make are concerning loop length and loop points on the pieces of music:

In the case of Redbook CD audio tracks, which the majority of these tracks were WAVs of, I tend to let them just run their natural course, even if that meant more trips through a piece than I'd otherwise allow. So, a specific example: Rolling Bad Guys from Lethal Enforcers: that is a longer than 2 minute loop which we hear, like 3 times on the CD track, when in ordinary circumstances, we'd only hear a loop that long just the one time. But that triple loop actually was only one trip through the CD track, which simply contains that many loops of the piece in itself. And lastly, as for my loop back production on them, it's a little rougher than usual because that's the way the tracks ended and began (where with non-Redbook, you can set the loops yourself), and since I had painted myself into a corner with only giving myself four days from recording with Hugues to do all the production work and get the episode out, I knew that I wouldn't have the time to sit and try to finagle them into something prettier. So I just had them start over organically (even if that meant it was clunkier). In short, if I had given myself more time, I might've been able to work something nicer, and more in line with other episodes, but knew I'd have to cut some corner somewhere due to the time constraints, and it seemed like here, at the loop points was the least invasive, least detrimental corner to cut. Hopefully you'll agree!

But again, on balance I'm still reasonably happy with the production job I managed here under the circumstances. You know, it's absolutely not a production job that I'm embarrassed of, nor regret becoming some people's first impression of Nerd Noise Radio. It's not my absolute finest work ever, as I'd said above, but it is also a far cry from my worst, and I think (hope) that it'll be well more than good enough for any without just super discerning and discriminating ears to enjoy!

And I think that's all I've got to say about this one beyond that it was a blast to do, and I really love the music and conversation, and hope you will as well [from that perspective, I think this one is a great episode, and one I'm perfectly happy having be some people's first impression of us]....and of course....that I still think it's so baller that something like this was even possible on something like the Steam Deck right out of the box, right? Not to mention that I might even possibly be the first person in our scene to have done it. And once again, I think that had I chosen to produce on one of my other devices instead, it would've made the resulting output not one iota better or worse than what it turned out to be.....just so much less cool! 😎

Cheers!