Love your podcast (content), but you may want to consider using an audio compressor to balance out the levels.  The shouting combined with the low levels, and then the ultra low levels of your callers makes it very difficult to listen to because we are constantly having to adjust our speaker volumes up and down.  An audio compressor will solve this and WTKA should have one in their arsenal.  I have several here at home, so perhaps I should just run the podcasts through one... however most people do not have hardware or software compression programs at home to be able to make these more listenable.

Sam's voice booms at several dB above everyone else, as does Ira's.  Brian's up and down and many of his words get lost.  When everyone starts talking and yelling over each other the volume gets doubled which happens often.  This is pretty annoying for the listener to deal with.  Compression smooths out the levels so that everyone is pretty much at the same volume on output.  WTKA should have an audio engineer on staff who can provide this very easily.  However it is a problem on the broadcasts as well...so perhaps they can not afford one.

Count me in! Thanks Brian--I'll be listening en route to bringing the MGoSophomore back to Ann Arbor tomorrow.

I co sign the compression issue and it should be something done easily via the WTKA sound board. If they use software to process the audio, then it's almost certainly a built-in feature (in the software) that is not being deployed. You can literally get a software compressor for free, so it's really a head-scratcher. It's a problem for me too as I listen at work, and it is impossible to find a volume you can just set the steam to-- I always have to adjust it many times throughout the broadcast because of the wide variance in sound amplitude.

I love Brian and these podcasts.  But these guys are delusional if they think that Harbaugh is only going to win 7 games with this roster and his coaching staff.  We would improve that much if Hoke (Funk, Jackson, et al) were still here, just on growth, returning starters, and Nuss having another year to work with the O.  I think they are seriously downplaying how much coaching improvement has come with JH.  Kalis intimated as such with the O line, for instance, I think we will see major improvement to an already decent and now veteran line.  Then you throw in Rudock, as Brian points out, and you should a major swing in turnover margin, which is key.  Then you throw in.... Harbaugh!  Intensity, commitment, guts, actual toughness... Harbaugh!  And 8-4 or 9-3 is a far more plausible prediction, and we could exceed that (as Brian admitted).  It will not take Harbaugh long to remind us that Minnesota is not actually a road game that we should fear.  We have to show up, to be sure, but you take our talent, experience, NFL coaching, Rudock, and Harbaugh, and we should kill teams like... Utah.  We'll find out in a few days!

I think that the professional blogosphere feels pressure not to look like fanboys and that makes them downplay things.  I also think this is a case with the Harbaugh effect is not well anticipated with analytics.  So I have no malice.  But they are lowballing these expectations.  College football is a coaching game -- and Harbaugh is one of the very best.