I have a podcast that includes an interview almost every week. None of those interviews have been done face to face and some of them have not even been done from the same continent as the interviewee since my show is a travel show. I record all of my interviews using Skype. Sometimes I am doing a Skype to Skype connection or sometimes I am using Skype out to call a normal phone number. My hardware setup is a headset microphone (Plantronics) and a laptop. I do not have an external mixing board.
One of the problems I have had is that if I don’t set the sound levels correctly balancing my sound level and the guest’s sound level then I can create a lot of extra work for myself in post production. In the worst case while the guest is speaking I am doing my Darth Vadar breathing because my sound level is two high relative to the guest.
At MacWorld I picked up a new program that helps solve this problem: Call Recorder from ecamm network. Call Recorder installs itself in Skype and allows you to record a Skype connection or call but to put each side of the conversation on a different track. So later on when you are editing the conversation you can change the volume of the two tracks independently.
First the good news. It works and seems to work reliably from my experience with the program so far. It records the conversation to a Quicktime .mov file with two tracks.
Now the bad news. It does work, but will only record two tracks even if you are in a Skype connection with 3 people. Your voice will get recorded on one track and all other users will be recorded on the other track.
If you want to add the audio to a sound editing program like Garageband you have to first split the movie into two different movies (one per track) using an included utility program. Then you will need to convert each of these movies to mp3 or aiff using yet another utility program.
But, if you want a reliable software solution to do dual track recording you might want to check out Call Recorder. The software has a free demo and currently sells for $13.46.