MrBiffo

NIGHTMARES IN SOUND

Added 2020-02-26 10:27:25 +0000 UTC

Morning all!

I was hoping to have a new episode up for you yesterday, but... I've been having a nightmare with it. When we filmed last week, we did two days. On the first day, the excellent Chris Bullock came along to record the sound via lapel mics. Unfortunately, her professionalism butted up against my enthusiastic amateurism... and I had a repeat of the issues which plagued me when editing Digitiser The Show... where my attempts to "fix" the sound just made everything worse.

In short, it has taken me three days already to edit this latest episode, mainly trying to get the audio up to muster. It's nothing Chris did wrong - but she records sound in a way that's more appropriate for TV shows and features, whereas we usually just bumble along.

What it means is that it requires a bunch of audio post-processing before it's good enough to use, which I don't have a clue how to do. Normally, we just plug our mics in, record direct into a sound recorder, I do a bit of compression, and we're good to go. So, after pulling out my hair over it since Sunday, yesterday I finally fell on my sword, and begged her to help. Which she kindly did. Sound is now fixed, thanks to her, but of course now I have to reconstruct the episode around the new version of the sound, which is likely to be several hours more work at least.

This is the sort of behind-the-scenes toil that goes into making content for the channel!

In short: you may get it later today, which is, I'm afraid, only a day earlier than I was planning to put it out for general public consumption. I'm switching up the days Digi eps go live, as Sunday is apparently the worst day to upload to YouTube, and Thursday is, inexplicably, the best.

So, that's the plan - if I can get the ep done in time - to see if it makes a difference. The latest episode is doing well (by our standards anyway), but gaining subscribers remains hard. In the last 28 days, we're actually down 4 subscribers on balance, as of today. We've gained many new ones, but they're offset by the number we've lost.

I don't know whether we're losing people who don't like Eli Silverman (that's one correlation, inexplicable as it is to me, though he remains a guest, even if he does seem more like a regular at the minute... and I implore all of you to give Digitiser Deluxe a chance; he's utterly brilliant in them, and I don't think these episodes are anything like Cheapshow).

Or maybe, more likely, we're still steadily jettisoning the retro gaming fans, who only want retro gaming content, but I'm at a loss as to where we find our new audience, and how we grow, as over the past couple of months we've been pretty much static. It's weird, because if that is the case - that it's the retro gamers who are leaving us - it kind of reaffirms my current trajectory, even if it is a bit disheartening.

I see my fellow retro gaming YouTubers experiencing rapid growth with their channels, and I know in some respects it'd be the easy path to pander to, but I'd be forcing it. It's just not where I'm at currently.

I think I've just grown weary of the way that, for some people, retro gaming is their one thing, and if you deviate from that in any way - by being daft and surreal, not taking it seriously, or colouring outside of the lines even slightly by talking about other subjects - gets you burned at the stake. That's no judgement on what anybody likes, or the content they produce - heck, I love games - more that I struggle with the sort of militant, myopic, focus on it from some, and after 27 years I feel exhausted by that.

I know that given my history this is all a bit like the guitarist in, I dunno, Megadeth, releasing an album of cheesy europop, but if you look at what I've done outside of Digi - even going back to my old blog in the 00s - it wasn't gaming related. Heck, half the time even Digi wasn't gaming related!

I know it's a bit of an abrupt shift, but I'm committed to seeing it through because, candidly, I just feel exhausted by retro gaming, the dramas, some of the personalities in the scene, and the way retro gaming sometimes becomes an identity. I always felt like a bit of a pretender in that respect; much as I love gaming, it's not the be-all and end-all of who I am.

What remains lovely, however, is that our core audience - that's most of you - is still incredibly loyal. Digitiser Live continues to sell well (and it WILL have a retro gaming theme), and I feel we're incredibly well supported by those who get us. And I know there are more people out there who would get us too, if only we can find them.

I can't thank you enough for sticking by me, even though I know the vast majority of you are Patrons because Digitiser was originally all about the gaming.

Anyhow, this is just a bit of a brain-dump. I'm not looking for unsolicited advice - I get enough of that on Twitter (yes, I KNOW you prefer my written stuff, thanks, anonymous person, but there's not much I can do about it if I feel burnt out by it).

Onwards!

Paul