Thanks for posting this and also for pointing out Martin Geddes comments. The use of softphones in general – and Skype specifically – certainly do have both benefits and drawbacks for podcasters. On the plus side, we can actually create shows that involve hosts located wherever they are in the world. On the negative side, audio quality can be sometimes… um… less than ideal.

For instance, Jonathan and I recorded a Blue Box episode in early September while he was in Asia via Skype and had quite a few audio artifacts and gaps in the recording. Because I’m a stickler for audio quality, my post-production of that episode has taken quite some time – and the resulting show still doesn’t meet my audio quality standards, but it is what I’ve got.

I don’t use the “double-ender” approach for our recording, primarily because of the extra work currently involved with doing so. I just have Skype or another softphone running on one PC and do the recording on a second PC (mixing in my microphone) – so the audio I record is whatever I hear. Certainly if there was a tool that made double-enders simple, along the lines of what Martin suggests, I might definitely consider it for occasional recordings under bad audio situations (or at least as a backup).

Thanks again for the pointer,
Dan