In this episode, the HPR_AudioBookClub discusses Star Trek The Continuing Mission created by Sebastian Prooth and Andy Tyrer.

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Non-Spoiler Thoughts

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• Thaj misses Star Trek, and this made me realize that (this has since changed)
• Voice acting is very good.
• It's hard to translate things like starship combat into an audio drama.
• Background sounds really sell the structure of these episodes as Star Trek.
• This proves that an abundance of canon is not a reason to reboot things. This finds a niche in an unexplored part of the timeline and works.
• The warp sound effect for jumping to warp is weird.
• We think LostnBronx should write a StarDrfiter Audiodrama for us to produce.

Beverage Reviews

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As usual, the HPR AudioBook Club took some time to review the beverages that each of us were drinking during the episode

• Thaj: Water and something from Kroger that I think resembles chocolate ice cream.
• x1101: Throwback style Mt. Dew made with real, diabetes inducing, sugar
• pokey: Led Light Bulbs....wait what?!?!
• FiftyOneFifty: Johnny Walker Black

Things We talked about

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• Recasting the captain was a bad idea.
• Thaj hates Cthulhu episodes of scifi shows.
• Which Star Trek is the best (the correct answer is DS9)
• Star Trek as an allegory for the real world.
• Pokey doesn't like time travel in Star Trek.
• And...we're back on DS9
• We geek about the different types of ships in Trek.
• Since we didn't talk about the audio drama that much, we did actually like it.

Our Next Audiobook

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Tincture, An Apocalyptic Proposition

The Next Audiobook Club Recording

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Right now we are working through a backlog of older episode that have already been recorded. Once that ends we fully anticipate recording new episodes with listener participation.

Further Recommendations

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• Stirling Engines
• Nathan Lowell
• Pokey wouldn't mind a few cyborg modifications
• Peter F. Hamilton
• Lock Picking
• I Don't want to live on this planet anymore
• Cory Doctrow's "Makers"
• 3D printed metal dice
• Ace of spaces credit card bottle opener
• Dice Ice
• Doormat

Feedback

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Thank you very much for listening to this episode of the HPR AudioBookClub. We had a great time recording this show, and we hope you enjoyed it as well. We also hope you'll consider joining us next time we record a new episode. Please leave a few words in the episode's comment section.

As always; remember to visit the HPR contribution page HPR could really use your help right now.

Sincerely, The HPR Audiobook Club

P.S. Some people really like finding mistakes. For their enjoyment, we always include a few.

Our Audio

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This episode was processed using Audacity. We've been making small adjustments to our audio mix each month in order to get the best possible sound. Its been especially challenging getting all of our voices relatively level, because everyone has their own unique setup. Mumble is great for bringing us all together, and for recording, but it's not good at making everyone's voice the same volume. We're pretty happy with the way this month's show turned out, so we'd like to share our editing process and settings with you and our future selves (who, of course, will have forgotten all this by then).

We use the "Truncate Silence" effect with it's default settings to minimize the silence between people speaking. When used with it's default (or at least reasonable) settings, Truncate Silence is extremely effective and satisfying. It makes everyone sound smarter, it makes the file shorter without destroying actual content, and it makes a conversations sound as easy and fluid during playback as it was while it was recorded. It can be even more effective if you can train yourself to remain silent instead of saying "uuuuummmm." Just remember to ONLY pass the file through Truncate Silence ONCE. If you pass it through a second time, or if you set it too aggressively your audio may sound sped up and choppy.

Next we use the "Compressor" effect with the following settings:

Threshold: -30db
Noise Floor: -50db
Ratio: 3:1
Attack Time: 0.2sec
Decay Time: 1.0 sec

"Make-up Gain for 0db after compressing" and "compress based on peaks" were both left un-checked.

After compressing the audio we cut any pre-show and post-show chatter from the file and save them in a separate file for possible use as outtakes after the closing music.

We adjust the Gain so that the VU meter in Audacity hovers around -12db while people are speaking, and we try to keep the peaks under -6db, and we adjust the Gain on each of the new tracks so that all volumes are similar, and more importantly comfortable. Once this is done we can "Mix and Render" all of our tracks into a single track for export to the .FLAC file which is uploaded to the HPR server.

At this point we listen back to the whole file and we work on the shownotes. This is when we can cut out anything that needs to be cut, and we can also make sure that we put any links in the shownotes that were talked about during the recording of the show. We finish the shownotes before exporting the .aup file to .FLAC so that we can paste a copy of the shownotes into the audio file's metadata.

At this point we add new, empty audio tracks into which we paste the intro, outro and possibly outtakes, and we rename each track accordingly.

Remember to save often when using Audacity. We like to save after each of these steps. Audacity has a reputation for being "crashy" but if you remember save after every major transform, you will wonder how it ever got that reputation.