Really interesting tool came out of nowhere, and that is Waveroom. A FREE recording studio, to compete with the likes of Riverside.fm, Podcastle.ai, Squadcast, etc.
It just so happened that I was looking for a new tool around the same time it came out too!
While they have some strengths, there are a lot of growing pains as well. Perhaps region compatibility is the differential factor (as the distance between servers matters). However here are my takes, good, and bad.
Pricing:
Let's get this out the way, its free, at least at the time of this recording. They did say they wanted to try and find ways to keep the price like that for a while too.
They want to stay free for the foreseeable future.
The Interface
I find that the recordings page has a lot to be desired. For one the dividers between recordings don't show up for me. They do on my secondary screen slightly, for whatever reason. However most of the time I have a hard time discerning between a button for one episode or the one next to it.
The other weird thing is that the "combined" recording is vertical, they stack the two speakers, instead of putting them side by side. Which seems completely opposite logically.
This is pretty standard, my one gripe is the bottom. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to press "start test record" instead of start meeting because of the color difference. They just need to be switched.
I've given all of this as feedback to the team as well to be clear.
Pretty standard conversation screen. Although I've had a number of technical problems here. I'll explain in the next section.
The Issues:
One thing I find super frustrating with all of these recording tools is that they "only work with Chrome". Firstly Firefox is completely capable of handling it, but more importantly than that I am using Opera GX, which is built on Chromium. It should work JUST FINE. However:
Getting it to Work:
I've had some creator friends who tried it, and it worked out of the box for them.
However for me.. I've tried it about 7 times now. The first two were complete flops, where me and the guest couldn't connect AT ALL. We both just had blank screens, well I could see my camera. The guests had literally black screens.
My 3rd attempt was with myself with an incognito browser, and I managed to connect it. I gave it another shot a little while later to give them some development time. Had an interview, and it went off pretty well. Besides one thing.
However pretty much every meeting from that 3rd going forward, I had an issue where my stream was not showing to the guest for about 5 minutes. Every time I joined a call with a guest, my side would not load for them at all for a while.
I learned that it was at least temporary, and so I just talked to them until I loaded in, but that is an issue that I'm not sure how to solve.
A couple interviews were fine besides that initial issue. Then on one of my recent interviews we had a crash on both sides, where me and the guest got kicked, and then when we got back in we could not sync up. It kept lagging, and visual tearing. Note: We both have great computers and plenty of ram.
We had to move to Zoom to finish the recording, luckily the video had saved up until the point of the crash.
I find this to be a bit annoying, but previous people you've had on the show appear here. So you have to manually remove them each time, and it gets complicated too when a guest needs to rejoin. As it doesn't remember them before, so you get duplicate people.
Another note is that the video quality isn't as high as it should be. The contrast, saturation, and focus of the camera seems to be different in Waveroom compared to other recording tools.
Catastrophic Fail:
While having to move to zoom is a total fail, as we had to leave the tool. My most recent attempt at using the tool ended miserably.
I'm still in the hope phase at the time of this writing, but unlike other tools there isn't a cloud recording to save you in a situation like this.
Me and a guest had a fantastic conversation. The issue of me not appearing to them for the first five minutes, did occur again, however most of the call we were fine connection wise.
We talked for over an hour, and had a phenomenal interview. One where we touched on a lot of points from what my show is about even too.
However towards the end, right before we were going to wrap up, my tab completely crashed. It was the only thing open, and yet my screen lagged. So I wanted to try and stop the recording to make sure it would save. It froze right as I was trying to press the button.
Then we got disconnected, and I had to join back in. However when we got back in the meeting was new. Our previous recording seemingly disappeared.
I took us both to the "upload" page, and we kept talking through other tools. For some reason despite my side being the one that got disconnected, my half of the recording seemed to go through.
The guest however, whose side did not falter, has not uploaded even after almost a dozen attempts. Internet speed is not the issue either it seems.
It has jumped from 22% to 80%, then "completed", then it keeps resetting to 20-25% each time he tries to upload.
At this point it seems like the recording is lost, and it is such a shame.
Now to be fair I have had worse issues with Riverside, and I have been actively reporting issues as they occur to the Waveroom team. Maybe to their annoyance, but hopefully it helps them grow. Whereas Riverside just always ignored my feedback, or worse gaslit me with help docs that I already read.
"It seems that the Waveroom team actually appreciates feedback!" I had written this before, but I take that back.
Thanks for the feedback! Unfortunately, if the instruction didn't help, we can't provide a fast solution and there is no way to get your video. Our team is already working on a fix, and we will do everything possible to avoid such problems in the future, thank you for understanding!
The recording was lost, and I feel that if the tool was designed better, then this interview could have been saved. Instead we had to rerecord in Podcastle.ai, which at this point is what I recommend you use.
I really hope that Waveroom get's the tool together, as it could really place in the market well.
