Skype & CAC
Setup:
- Blue Yeti USB microphone
- laptop
- Skype-out: from computer to landline
- 877-511-5483
This is similar in principle to the setup Brendan used when he called from Thailand a few years ago.
When I called Mike around 4:45 PM or so, I could hear the echo of my own voice on a short delay, perhaps one or two tenths of a second.
That was the sign that the setup wasn't going to work.
My cell phone wasn't and isn't getting a reliable signal. I'm in a cul-de-sac in Catonsville, Maryland, for a couple of days. My cell phone has been working fine in Scranton.
I should have immediately gone to my backup plan when I heard the echo: use the house phone. We tried this in the middle of the show, and I'm not confident that we ran the test using the right circuit. I didn't hang up my Skype connection — I assumed Mike would hang it up. When we talked again on the air, we may still have been using the Skype line!
AFTER the "best of" started playing, Mr. Boehk said, "I can give you a telephone connected to the all with a cord." In retrospect, I should have asked him about that possibility when I arrived. I've been using the Yeti for a couple of months for Skype, and it has been very satisfactory. It wasn't the Yeti's fault directly — there isn't anything that it did to foul up the connection. It was the thought that it is a very superior microphone to anything on a cell phone or landline that made me want to use it.
It seems to me that the problem is that the board was in duplex mode, which is necessary so that both voices can be heard at the same time, but Skype is a half-duplex system. The echo coming back to me from the duplex system was delayed by processing as it traveled through a gazillion different modems. As it played back to me, the incoming packets interfered with the outgoing packets, creating the underwater bubbling sound.
I think when Mike and I tested the line before the show, I was speaking in very short sentences. We just didn't generate enough interference to make the problem audible. When I started speaking louder and longer in the prologue and prayer, that's when the outgoing stream deteriorated due to interference from the delayed duplex feedback.