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Out of all of the new music I've heard and collected this year, I somehow managed to whittle my favorites down to 23 albums, which for one reason or another sent chills down my spine as I listened, or kept coming back to haunt my inner ear.

This year sees a good mix of extreme metal, prog, and rock.

• 3 Inches of Blood - Here Waits Thy Doom
• Arch Enemy - The Root of All Evil
• Beardfish - Destined Solitaire
• Believer - Gabriel
• Blackfield - Blackfield NYC - Blackfield Live In New York City
• Candlemass - Death Magic Doom
• Dream Theater - Black Clouds and Silver Linings
• Guns'n'Roses - Chinese Democracy
• Mastodon - Crack the Skye
• Megadeth - Endgame
• My Dying Bride - For Lies I Sire
• Neon Horse - Haunted Horse: Songs of Love, Defiance & Delusion
• Nile - Those Whom The Gods Detest
• Redemption - Snowfall on Judgement Day
• Riverside - Anno Domini High Definition
• Paradise Lost - Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us
• The Pineapple Thief - 3000 Days
• Porcupine Tree - The Incident
• Slayer - World Painted Blood
• Steven Wilson - Insurgentes
• Stryper - Murder By Pride
• Transatlantic - The Whirlwind
• Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Night Castle

For the past few months we've been recording the Illegal Argument java podcast and I thought I'd write down some quick thoughts on the tools/setup we're using.

The first ever recording (not publicly available) was recorded directly to internal mike of Richards Macbook Pro into Garage Band, unfortunately the internal microphone is located right next to the Mac's fan, so every so often you'd hear the fan kick in.

Following that first recording, we purchased a Blue Snowball USB microphone and recorded direct to Garage Band. Immediately we found the sound quality of the recordings improve, however we also quickly discovered Garage Bands 2gig file size limit after recording for 2-3 hours in one sitting. Unfortunately, given that we now had 3 people sitting around the mike talking, with the Macbook behind us on Richards desk meant no one noticed that recording had stopped.

Around episode 7 I purchased myself a Zoom h4n from Samsontech, whilst not cheap this external "field recorder" is probably the best gadget I'm purchased in a long while (the HTC Magic coming a close second).

The Zoom H4n is a portable, hardware based 4 track recording device that uses SD/SDHC memory cards for storage and can also operate as a USB hard drive. Our initial recordings just used the built in microphones, and the (now) four of us sat around the device talking as normal.

Following Antony's jaunt back to London and the Netherlands, we've now added Skype, the Belkin headphone-hub, and the Zoom's 4-track recording mode to the mix:

• A 3.5mm to 3.5mm (with 6mm adapter) 'headphone cable' from the Macbooks headphone jack plugs into the XLR channel input at the bottom of the Zoom.
• The belkin headphone hub is plugged into the Zoom's monitor port.
• Three headphones used by 3 podcasters locally plugged into the Belkin headphone hub.
• One 3.5mm to 3.5mm cable plugged into the Belkin headphone hub and the Macbooks line-in port.

This setup now gives us the ability to record any audio coming from the Macbook, and feeding our reactions back in, allowing us to record any skype conversations or audio played on the computer.

For audio editing we're using a combination of Garage Band from Apple, Fission from Rogue Amoeba depending on who is mixing/editing each episode.