Doing the same for listener v-mails that come in through Google Voice is very helpful also. Lately I've started running a little noise removal on them first with Audacity, exporting them to a wav file, and then through Levelator. They sound clearer when I then play the v-mails during the show.

MAJOR SPOLIER: In the climactic scene, an alien who seems to be a unified being in 3 distinct parts literally plucks our heroes from their destiny of perishing in a blazing fire.

oooooh-kay.

MINOR SPOILER: Lotso represents what happens to too many Christians when we feel that God has let us down — they turn bitter and even condescending to those who still have faith. I think we all know people who have an expectation that nothing bad will ever happen to us if we follow God, because He "has a wonderful plan for our life."

But bad things do happen, tragedy does strike. These "when the rubber meets the road" moments are when we need to cling more closely to our faith, and turn our back on Him. You know, the idea that "if God couldn't stop the hurricane (or keep me from losing my job, or give Mary cancer, or not let me have a baby), why should I worship Him?" Lotso takes his disappointment in God and turns it inward into anger, and becomes a militant atheist, asking the key question of the film: "Where is your God now?"

My switch came about after I started thinking about bit rates when I noticed the podcasts I subscribed to were coming through at a variety of bit rates. I even sent Cliff a question on that which he discussed on a Podcast Answerman episode. His response left me with a few questions, so I did some research and ran across the LAME vs. Fraunhofer debate. (If you search for the two you'll see that there are very strong feelings on either side.)

One article demonstrated the difference between the two encoders at a variety of bitrates and showed that Fraunfofer had higher audio quality at lower bit rates, and there wasn't much difference at higher bit rates. That single study didn't silence the controversy, but since my (mostly speech) podcast is single channel mono at 64kps, I decided to try Fraunhofer. Besides, that's the guy who invented mp3 so I figured he ought to know how to encode the stuff!

Like you, at the Fraunfofer website I discovered you can't buy the encoder, but you can use it through iTunes as you described in TAP010. (I passed that on to Cliff, who was unaware at the time.) Anyway, the workflow using iTunes to encode the mp3 is simple enough and it works well for me.

Thanks for the great podcast, and congratulations on your marriage!

Max

<img src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitpic/photos/full/147259808.png?AWSAccessKeyId=0ZRYP5X5F6FSMBCCSE82&Expires=1282150473&Signature=85bUC17m6%2FHCu4RbPIMf1T3Wrl4%3D" />

The level indicator shows high volume being played.

Anything come to mind why I would be having this problem?

I'm downloading it now!

I need something that shows how much time is left on the file and so forth.

Thanks for doing this show. I REALLY enjoy it!