Welcome to the iGame Word, the blog for my radio show iGame Radio. Where I talk about the Mac game industry. Where I talk about the computer game industry in general. Where I talk about running a live Internet radio show. Where I talk about how much I *hate* being cutting edge because of “technical difficulties”.

Case in point. For the past few broadcasts I’ve been using the VoIP program Skype as my main software tool for interviewing live guests on the show. I keep having problems. I keep thinking it’s me. I keep changing the way things are connected and configured from my mic to my mixer to the iMic to my desktop.I finally get things configured and connected absolutely correctly, the sound is crystal clear, I do sound tests to prove it, and I’m all prepared to do a nice show on Monday, 11/21.

And it’s an utter flop. Because I started with my new guest co-host (Kevin Murphy of Macologist), *and* had two guests on at one point (Dan Labriet and F. C. Covett from DanLabGames), the sound was horrific (even with just Kevin on)…very spotty, listeners were catching only every third word or so.

Worse, my guests were getting echos of their voices, which was manageable to some, but very unmanageable to others (especially for Dan, who’s not a native English speaker). I was sure that it was something else to do with my setup that hadn’t popped up before.

So I did research. And found IT’S ALL SKYPE’S FAULT!!! Boy, am I pissed. This seems to be an issue with Skype, and with Skype for Mac of all things. Read the forums, and you will see a lot of people complaining about the echoing issues, and the distortions as well. Skype states that the echo seems to be a problem with Mac laptops…the internal mic and the built-in speakers being so close to each other result in a lag echo effect whereby person #1 speaks to person #2 (with the laptop) and said laptop’s mic picks up person #1’s voice from said laptop’s speakers, thus sending person #1’s voice back to them shortly after they spoke.

That might make sense, if everyone I’d been speaking to were using laptops, or the people who were using laptops weren’t using headphones. Gah!

So now I have to look into another solution. I’m going to use iChat AV in the meantime, but it unfortunately won’t be a long-term solution, at least not for all situations, because not everyone I interview will have a Mac (I try to have guests who have something meaningful to say that impacts the Mac industry, and outside impacts can and do happen).

Worse, now I have a show that can’t be posted because it doesn’t have an interview. Should I post what I have of the 11/21 show, or should I wait until I have finally finished recording the interview with the folks at DanLabGames? Said interview, btw, had to be rescheduled from Wednesday to Monday…so no, the archive won’t be posted Thursday. If I wait until Monday, then all of the news items will be a bit old. Or do I just do a whole new show on Monday, and play the recorded interview at the right time, hoping that the recording doesn’t get rescheduled after I PR’d the show? Sigh. Decisions, decisions.

Why yes, I do eat Brie with my Whine.

Happy Thanksgiving, folks.