Hey, y'all. Marty here. And we are back with another special unmute for you guys. And we wanted to bring on my good friend Jonathan Price from aftersight. How you doing, Jonathan?
I am fantastic, man. How are you doing?
I am doing really good. So why don't we start out by kind of just talking about your background a little bit and how you got into audio and all that kind of stuff.
Well, that's a very long story. Where do you want to start and how far back? It goes a long way.
What was your first inkling into audio? Like, when did you get the bug? And you went, hey, this audio stuff is just. I got the bug. I love it. It's fun. I love the gear and doing all the different things. So, like, kind of. When did you get the bug?
Holy smokes. So I'm going to say probably two or three, because. Two or three. Wow. Yeah. So my dad had this really cool, and I could not tell you the name of it even if I tried, but it was this old, I want to say, like, radio stereo system thing, and it had this giant knob on the front of it that you could turn it up and obviously down and. But it had these EQ actual faders that you could play with. And so he was always adjusting them and trying to make his speaker sound really good. And he wasn't really an audiophile guy, but I just thought they were cool. And I had no idea what I was doing. And I would just play with the sliders and faders, and I could, you know, make different noises and sounds and, you know, different things with music that I was like, oh, this sounds really funny. It sounds like they're the chipmunks or this sounds like they're in a, you know, behind a wall or something. I did. I didn't really comprehend that. But that's really when I got the big bug for audio. And really it was kind of going through that and having the disc men and the Walkmans and the tape cassette players and record players and all things audio. But I really got into music, and music really propelled me through elementary, high school, college, until I started, you know, recording friends and bands and little voiceover products. And I didn't work a whole lot with hardware gear until I got into late high school, early college, and then I was. I was hooked from then.
So what was your first microphone and. Well, actually. What was your first setup that you had that you could actually do stuff with?
Oh, my gosh. What was it? It was. I know I had a Shure SM.
58, I think everyone's had one of those.
Yeah, that's kind of what I started with. And I may have had another, like, really stupid, cheap microphone, but we had. I don't even remember what it was. I think it was a presonus, like, fader port that you could. And you could plug in like a. Like a audio to, like, XLR to usb, sort of like what you had in the old school midi connectors where you had the two midi in and out and then going to your computer kind of like that. And that was it. And we would just record on that one microphone and try to do what we could. And it was a mess, but it was awesome. And I tell you what, that's actually a really good place to learn how to do audio, because if you can do it with something that is dirt cheap and really simple and make it sound good, then you can start adding tools to your toolbox and not trying to add them just for the sake of, you know, adding them and hoping that it will magically make your stuff sound better.
Yeah, definitely. And so when you were in high school, college years, did they have their. Well, college probably did. I don't know about your high school, but did it have its own radio station, or did they have its own radio station?
High school did not. We had, you know, every school has the morning announcements and, you know, that kind of stuff, so we didn't really have a radio station. I did work a lot with the audio in the band department, in theater, and, you know, all those types of things.
Yeah.
But I also was part of the orchestra and the choir and the actual music. Right. Yeah. So I was both front of house, back of house, behind scenes, up and down. I was. If there was anything to be had with audio and music, I was probably doing it.
Um, that's.
And I just immersed. Yeah, I just immersed myself into so many of those things.
And then going into college, did it have its own radio station, or what did you do in college? Kind of to keep it going with all of broadcasting and audio and all.
The things so broadcasting I didn't get into until much later in life. And it was really more about the collecting audio, recording audio, producing audio, producing music, doing voiceover, that kind of stuff. It wasn't really broadcast related, but in college, we had quite a few radio stations. I didn't work on any of them, but they were. They were okay. College radio stations, you know, they're, you know, they're okay. But I really. I continued what I was doing at high school and collecting audio, cleaning audio and when you're in studios at metro State. When I went there my final year, we partnered with UC Denver, which is Colorado University. But they have the Denver campus, and we have three campuses that are all combined to create this one massive campus, if you will. And so you have metro State, CU Denver, and community College of Denver that all share the same things. And so because metro State at the time didn't have a lot of money to pour into audio gear and technology and recording studios and things like that, UC Denver really footed the bill for that. And they built, I think, four professional studios that we could record anywhere from 70, 80 piece orchestras all the way down to, you know, voiceover and, you know, little intimate vocal booths. Uh, we had portable vocal booths, which were a lot of fun and really trippy. You walk in there and everything is completely silent and everybody's talking around. You can't hear it. It's just very weird. Um, kind of like when you wear those noise, when you know that, like, you wear those noise cancellation headphones and everything kind of feels weird on your head. That's what it's like, but in a voiceover room. So, yeah, I did that, and it was a lot of fun. I just recorded everything and was still involved in heavily into music. And so I think you have to be on both sides of it to understand both sides of it. Many musicians don't have any idea what recording engineers go through, but most of the time, recording engineers know exactly what's going on in a musician's head. So, yeah, it's fun.
I find it interesting that in the music situation, you'll have, you know, a producer who has his own studio, or maybe you rent a studio, depending on what you're doing, and usually, depending on the level that they're at, will bring their own engineer or hire an engineer for the job. And the producer is only there a very little bit of the time where really the engineer and the band a lot of the time, is doing most of the work in the studio.
That's right.
And the producer just kind of pops in and out every kind of so often, you know.
Yeah, they could, we like to call the producers in the music world, just glorified musicians who like to tell people what to do. And most of the time, if you're. And I'm a producer, so I have to, you know, but I'm a different producer. I have my hands in absolutely everything, which is good. But from an engineering perspective, when you have a producer who's just going through everything that you're doing with a fine tooth comb and saying, no, this is wrong and this is wrong, but they don't know how to tell you what's wrong. That's what drives me insane.
Yeah, definitely. So exiting out of college and then going forward, were you still doing the same thing, or what did you do when you exited out of college and for your first jobs?
So, my first jobs out of college were just teaching voice, piano, really anything that I could get. Doing some voiceover work lightly, some coaching training. I was recording some bands who needed either mixing work or, you know, live recording or, you know, just different things like that. I worked for my church for quite a while, doing audio and, you know, recording sermons and worship music and things like that. And it was just whatever I could find to pay the bills. That's what I was doing. Yeah. Yeah, it does. Which was really fun because I got to be very versed in a lot of different things, and I picked up little things from every single job that I did. And I'm the kind of person that if I teach a kid, or if I find a new way to teach a kid something, I'll try to apply it to as many other areas as I can, and there's some wisdom in understanding how to communicate certain things. So, like I was saying, if a producer came in and he said, oh, I think it needs a little bit more. I just don't know, like a sparkle or some shine or can we make this a little dirtier? Like, they know in their head what they want, but if you're a musician or an engineer who doesn't have any clue what that means, there's going to be a lot of different, you know, hiccups and so understanding all of those areas was really good. I did, when I got into podcasting was about 17 years ago.
Now that the podcast has even been around that long.
Well, I was thinking about that yesterday, and I was talking with. I remember who it was, but we were talking about how long podcasting had been around. And I remember, like, early two thousands. Like, this new fad called podcasting was coming out, and I was like, what is this? That's not gonna. We need. We have radio for that, you know, and. But it's clearly taken off. But I got involved with a company called Legal Talk Network, and they were recording legal shows from lawyers from all over the world. And, you know, different. Like, I think they had close to 80 shows that they were running to.
Talk about law jargon that would get real sleepy, I would think, after a.
While, well, it was interesting. They had all sorts of shows, from family law to civil law to traffic to real estate to. It was, there was a lot of really interesting stuff. And they would cover, you know, current topics along with case studies and different things like that. So as much as I found it very boring, I did learn the ability to tell stories through that. And they brought me on simply as an editor. And the role of an editor, when you're podcasting is to tell the person's story clearly and concisely. It's not to add your own fluff to it unless, you know, there, there are news networks out there that want to spin an angle, so, you know, that's on them. But, you know, a story can be told, you know, several of which ways do you want the story that is unedited, raw and true to the best of your ability? Or do you want to make it sound like they're the condemning, you know, whatever it is they want to condemn or promoting whatever they want to promote. And as audio editors and engineers, specifically in podcasting, that, I believe that you hold this really high standard of yourself, to be honest, trustworthy, noteworthy and appropriate with your, with editing and storytelling. Because if a guest comes on and they tell you a story that you don't really, I guess, want them to be telling, and you change their story, they're gonna get real upset real quick, and then you lose your integrity. And I didn't like, I didn't like the idea of integrity getting lost. So when I started doing that, I learned how to tell stories. I learned how to edit. I learned how to take out the filler and the stuff. And that really propelled me into storytelling because I love storytelling. So I got into voiceover coaching, voice acting, and still doing all the lessons and stuff. But that really pushed me into what I'm doing today.
Yeah. And with that being said, so how did you find your way to aftersight?
Oh, my goodness. So at the time, I was looking for a job. I was working with Amazon, and I was just trying to make ends meet and running that crazy rat race, and I just had to get out of there. I played, I also played football for 13 years growing up, and played baseball and soccer and everything I could possibly play. So my body was pretty beat up. And it didn't really like the Amazon life. And I was in just really bad, like, moral spirits or I was just, you know, kind of depressed, really. And I was like, man, God, I need a job. I need somewhere where I can be with my kids, take them to and from school. I want to do something that I love you've given me this passion and I'm not using it for anything. And like, I went on line and I, I had applied for tons and tons of jobs that were all over the US, and I found this little company who was looking for a part time podcast producer, and I was like, oh, sweet, I'll just apply for this. It's part time. It's in Boulder. I know exactly what to do. This is going to be awesome. So I applied and went through the interview with Kim and Alex and Penn, and it was amazing. And got hired two weeks later, started two weeks later and quit Amazon instantly. And then a month after getting with aftersight, they had said, oh, this is a part time position. I was like, oh, that's great. When is there a possibility of going full time? They're like, yeah, I think in the future there will be. Well, it turned out that future was a month later. There was so much work that we wanted to do and grow and it just took off from there. And I haven't looked back. And I always, I'm so thankful for this job because they're my work family and I love every single person on our team. And it's interesting that with this team, we're so much more of a family than we are just coworkers and all that. And being in this company, I don't ever feel like I'm working, which is wonderful. I'm playing with audio gear all day long. I'm talking with amazing people all day long. So what more could I ask for?
So for those who maybe don't know, maybe you can talk about what aftersight is and what they do.
Yeah, absolutely. Aftersight started about 33, 34 years ago with, his name is David, and I forget his last name, but he started this company as the radio reading service of the Rockies. And the whole point of radio reading service was to take print audio. So really newspapers at the time and turn them into audio and broadcast them over radio to blind and low vision people. And that evolved over the years into reading magazine articles and different news stories and different things that were not just the newspaper. And so they partnered with PBS and we use their towers and their radio signal to kind of piggyback off of what we're doing, at least for our broadcast stuff. And that evolved. And about, you know, when the, when the pandemic hit, we were down to, I think, just a handful of people, I think maybe four or five people. And Kim, our amazing executive director, took overd. She said, okay, we're going to ramp this up. And so we started. It was kind of before this, but we started doing more magazines, and we started doing, you know, community newsletters and nursing home letters and menus and, you know, social events and magazines from all over the country and newspapers from all over the country. We started pulling in services that we weren't reading because they were reading it and started reading that, and we got brought on into the IA is, and I forget what that acronym stands for. And so we kind of share audio through all of these different networks. And now we have fast forward to today. Made it through the pandemic. We started growing like a grass fire. It was crazy. And now we have about 120 volunteers with about 200 different publications that we read either on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. And just for our volunteer read content, when they brought me on, they started doing podcasts, and we wanted to start telling people's stories in the blind community. And we wanted to make this community more close knit tight and be able to inspire people to go do more things. You know, the unemployment rate is very low for the blind, low vision community, or, I'm sorry, it's very high. And we wanted to address that. We wanted to address mental health and just daily living. And so we started off with the blind chick, or, which was actually called aftersight. Name change really screwed everything up in the naming. So the blind chick, and it really talks about life stories, and we bring on people from literally all over the world to talk about their stories of vision loss and how they walked that line and how they succeeded and how they thrived. And these aren't the most famous people in the blind community. Some of them are. We've had on Eric Weimer and Lex Gillette and some really amazing people. But really, it was just the ability to tell stories that we wanted to get out. After that took off, we started with another show called Navigating Life with vision loss. And that is a program where we talk about everything for a particular month. So, like this, you know, in September, we're talking about men's fashion and kind of dressing and, you know, all that kind of stuff. We've talked about parenting, mental health, finances, survival, all that great stuff for an entire month. And then that launched Blindsight, which is our mental health show. And we found that with mental health, we wanted to take every single thing in mental health and put it under the umbrella of blindness, because so many times, blindness isn't directly the cause of somebody's mental health struggle. It is a aspect of it. But, you know, if you're alive, there's a really good chance you've struggled with some sort of depression, and we wanted to address that. And you may have depression because you're blind, because you just have gone blind, or you may be struggling with depression because your mom, dad, your mom or dad died, or you've, you know, lost your job or whatever. So we really wanted to make sure that we were focusing on the mental health aspect in the blind community, and that was very unique. Then out of that came, um, one of my favorite shows, blind level tech, or BLT. And it kind of hit that we wanted accessibility technology show that really focused on a whole lot of areas of technology, from audio to accessibility to cane travel, to guide dogs to, you know, if it's a useful, accessible tool. We wanted to talk about it because there wasn't a. We didn't feel there was enough information about it, so we said, okay, well, let's do that. And so Evan and I, our technical guy, a technical audio guru, he and I just started talking about technology, like, let's do a podcast. And we're like, what are we going to call it? We have no idea. And I was driving home from work one day, and I remembered, oh, I just really want to BLT. That was it. I was like, BLT. Blind technology. What's the L. Blind level tech? Sure. Blind level technology. And it kind of evolved from that, and we kept that going, and it turned into, we have this show, or we have this segment in our show called the Sandwich of the week, where we take the acronym BLT, and we kind of play with that and say, what's your favorite sandwich of this week? And it becomes really hokey and cheesy, but people like it. People love it, and it makes me really hungry.
Yeah. And then right after you're starving.
That's all, dude. And we make sure that we try to record right before lunchtime so that we can go eat immediately. It's really fun, but sometimes that doesn't happen. And then the last podcast that we do is a brand new show called Game Changers. And this one's really special to me, because as an athlete growing up, I really enjoyed the inspiring stories of athletes, and there wasn't a whole lot of love given to the community when it came to athletics. You have programs that feature blind athletes as a whole or as a. Like a segment, or they may feature it for a couple of weeks, but I couldn't find a show necessarily that talked about blind sports in its entirety. And so we created a show called Game Changers. And this is a show that I host now with my partner, Ethan Johnston, who is a blind beatball player. And him and I talk to athletes and, you know, psychologists and trainers and weightlifters. And so, yeah, the show's called Game changers. And it just become really special to me. And when we have these people on here, it. It gets me inspired, it gets me pumped up and it gets me ready to kind of rock and roll for the rest of my day and sometimes the week. And to hear some of these people's stories of what they can do and why they can do it is that we had is amazing. We had a guy on here who does slack lining as somebody who is blind. And if you don't know what slack lining is, it's taking this long rope and giving it a little slack. It's kind of like tightrope, but that's tightrope. Everybody kind of knows what tightroping. You balance on the rope and you try not to die. Slack lining, you give slack to the line and you start bouncing up and down on it. So it's just like, it's an incredible sport that. Yeah, just doing it as somebody who is blind would just like. It impresses me that people who are sighted can do it, much less somebody who's blind. That's our offerings and our shows and just a little bit of history about aftersight.
Yeah, that is super awesome. Thanks for filling us in on all of that. So, as of today, what's your setup? What's your gear? What are you using today?
Let's see. I am currently recording through a presonus Studio 192. I have both the mobile version and the rack version. And it does come with. I can record up to 192 kb or Hertz for really high end recording. I can go down to 16 bit if I needed to, which is really funny to record in. And then I'm using my CAD GXL 2200 microphone. It is a XLR phantom power microphone. And really outside of that I have a couple of, you know, eqs and compressors that are hardware that I don't use because right now everything is in the box and I haven't set them up because I just want the desk space. And so everything in the box, I run logic for my main digital audio workstation. And then I have amazing tools from, you know, I've got izotope, pretty much everything from isotope. I love isotope products, the ozone eleven, rx, eleven, neutron four, I believe it is. And then I run a lot of, you know, various plugins that. Yeah, it's really, everything's in the box. I also run loopback, which we talked a little bit about before we hopped on the show. Loopback is an amazing software. And yeah, that's. Mac Mini is my computer of choice right now. Spec'd out.
It's surprising how powerful those are for what they are. Crazy.
You know, I. So before I got this, I actually had a treat. A cheese grater Mac 2010, and I'm not kidding you, up until December this last December, 2023, I had that thing humming like a dream. And it still runs really, really well, but I upgraded the crap out of it and, you know, I kept updated the. No, it wasn't. But over the years, you know, you keep a computer running for twelve years, almost 15 years, it was awesome. And, you know, it has 128 gigs of Ramdhenne, it has 16 terabytes of internal storage, and then, you know, just all this crazy stuff.
But it would be a really great external data server in locally for you.
That's exactly what it functions as. Yep. And it's daisy chain through Ethernet. And so now it runs all of my hardware or my software plugins and my VST instruments and all that. So when I'm producing, I can take a lot of that stress off the hard drive of the Mac Mini and I can just run everything. You know, it's, it's beautiful. I love it. It's so fast, so screaming.
Yeah, it's ridiculous. And did you get the regular Mac mini or did you get the Mac mini Pro? Because they actually came out with the Mac mini M version, and then all of a sudden they came out with the pro version of it, which is kind of cool.
Yeah, I didn't buy the pro hype. I went with the Mac Mini M two because what I really needed it to do was to process the audio quickly. And so a lot of the plugins that I have are processor heavy. And when you're putting the same processor really into the pro version, you're not, you're paying five to $1,000 more for the quote unquote pro name. And some of the, some of the other upgrades, I don't do video, so I really didn't need the pro aspect of it.
Yeah.
But really it was, it was my audio, you know, processor, because I do all audio all day long and I don't do video, so I didn't really have to worry about that.
Yep. Well, awesome. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming and talking to us all about your, you know, how you got your start and all your gear and all of that before we let you go. Why don't we let people know how they can reach out to you if they want and how they can check out all things aftersight as well?
Yeah, absolutely. So you can reach out to me at my email jonathanftersight.org dot. If you have, you know, comments or suggestions on any of our shows, we have feedback lines. You can call those. You can visit aftersight.org for more information about what we do. We're on Facebook, I think Twitter. I know Instagram. We're on YouTube as well. Most all of our shows are on YouTube. You can find blind level tech game changers, blind sights, the blind chick and navigating life with vision loss all on YouTube and I think that's about it.
Cool. Well, thank you so much again for being here. It was really fun chatting with you and hopefully we'll see you soon and everyone else, we'll see you next time.