Author: Chris Curran

I can confidently tell you that if you know how to produce professional audio and you talk to enough potential clients, you can definitely build up to earning over $100k per year producing podcasts from home for clients. (full-time, of course)

But maybe you just want to work 5, 10 or 20 hours per week. Cool.

Whatever your plan, to roughly figure out your earning potential, I’d say $75 or $100 or $125 per hour is the kind of rate you could arrange, again, _IF_ you’re a pro at producing audio and talk with enough mid-large companies who have _real_ marketing budgets. NOTE: The figures above are estimates earnings per hour – I don’t advise charging per hour – charging per episode is usually much better for all parties involved.

*If you’re not a pro at producing audio and you WANT to be, check out the Podcast Engineering School’s FULL PROGRAM (next semester starts Jan. 11, 2022 – and the next semester after that will start in April 2022).

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Adjusting the overall loudness (LUFS level) of your final episode audio is usually the last step in podcast audio production, just before saving the final MP3 file. But before that, some podcast engineers/producers like to use a bit of compression (usually multiband) to control the dynamics a bit more and increase perceived loudness of the entire episode.

Personally I also sometimes add a bit of saturation in addition to a bit of compression.

What is your last step in your audio production?

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Personally, I edit swiftly to knock out the work but I definitely don’t rush. I get in a zone and focus intently. I like editing so I definitely stay in a chill mood.

You?

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And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

One thing to keep in mind when producing the audio of a podcast episode where one participant is using a condenser microphone the other participant is using a dynamic microphone:

Because the condenser microphone sound will probably contain more high frequency information (clarity) than the dynamic microphone, in post-production you may want to roll off some high frequencies of the condenser microphone so that it better matches the sound of the dynamic microphone. Alternatively you could boost the high frequencies of the dynamic microphone to better match the two sounds. Or do a combination of both, of course.

This isn’t alway necessary but it’s definitely something to keep in mind in this particular situation.

Also, sometimes you will not know what microphones were used in an episode, so it’s worth reminding you of some fundamental audio production advice: ALWAYS rely on your ears to mix various sources of audio.

Have often do you EQ voices to better match each other?

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And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

1. Noise due to a bad microphone — scratchy, crunchy or distorted sound. This is extremely rare.

2. Background noise from air vents, air conditioners, fans, cars driving by, etc. Avoid this by recording in a quiet environment.

3. Bleed/Echo from other participants contaminating the recording due to a remote participant NOT wearing headphones or earbuds. The bleed/echo happens because their computer speakers’ audio goes directly into their microphone, causing an “echo” for all other participants as well as massive bleed of all other participants on the non-headphone-wearer’s recorded file, which of course is terrible and frankly unusable. Good recording services like Riverside, Squadcast, Zencastr, etc. offer Echo Cancellation for folks who are not using headphones/earbuds and this eliminates the bleed/echo — but this feature can also create a nasty muting/ducking effect when two or more participants speak over each other at the same time, and this is why no one should ever default to relying on this echo cancellation feature — every participant should ALWAYS wear headphones or earbuds, period, unless they literally don’t have any.

May you avoid all these types of noise on your recordings and produce audio that sounds great!!!

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And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

Using compression in post-production helps voices maintain a more consistent volume, but background noise is exacerbated and made louder by using compression.

…which is why you ALWAYS want to record podcast hosts and guests with the LEAST amount of background noise possible! This includes everything – fans, air conditioners, air vents, outdoor noise, family members in the next room, chair squeaks, desk thumps, etc.

How careful are you with regards to minimizing background noise?

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And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

Some songs are produced with such amazing sound that the song seems to transform into something MORE than just a song! Pure transcendence, you might say.

What is one song that sounds amazing to you? …or 2 or 3 songs 😉 hehe

Comment below.

I’ll give you one of mine — Pneuma by Tool.

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And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

Earning over $100,000 per year is possible when producing podcasts from home. But you have to be a podcast audio professional and you have to find clients who can pay you what you’re worth — BOTH are possible!

Musicians may want to learn how to produce podcasts professionally and earn great money working part-time from home which will give them plenty of free time to focus on their music creation.

The clients ARE out there. High income levels ARE possible, IF someone is willing to become a true professional 😉

What are your thoughts?

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And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

Mastering, in general, is the final step of audio production in music, movies, podcasting, videos, etc.

In podcasting, the main role of mastering is to set the final audio level of the episode to -19 LUFS (if mono) or -16 LUFS (if stereo).

In addition to LUFS leveling, “crazy” people like me and many other accomplished podcast engineers take the opportunity in the mastering step to make additional tweaks to the audio using processors like EQ, compression, limiting, saturation, exciters, filtering and/or whatever else will make the episode sound even better.

What does your mastering step consist of? Comment below 😉

And if you’re interested, check out The History of Mastering.

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And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

Room Tone is the slight background “noise” that is captured by a microphone when the podcast participant(s) is not talking or making any other noise.

It can be handy to capture some of this room tone for the purpose of using it in post-production, if necessary, to elongate spaces between people speaking instead of inserting a 100% muted section of audio (which can sound unnatural and jarring).

Personally I don’t deliberately record any room tone — some people do — but usually in a normal recording session there is at least 1-2 seconds of room tone on each person’s track which I can copy and paste somewhere if I need to.

What’s your approach to room tone? Comment below.

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And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

When editing a podcast:

• Chopping off part of a word is a bad edit and sounds terrible.
• Removing too much of the natural pause between a question and an answer (or between an answer and the next question) sounds unnatural and feels terrible.
• Unskillfully removing umms can make a conversation’s pacing sound artificial and unnatural.
• Removing “human” parts like laughing, pausing, struggling for a word, etc. can make a conversation sound sterile and lifeless.
• Cutting breaths in half sounds weird and is disruptive.

You get the idea.

What other examples am I forgetting? Comment below, rockstar!

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And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

It’s quite annoying when the intro music of a podcast is WAY louder than the hosts voice. This makes it difficult to hear the hosts voice clearly.

It’s also quite annoying when the intro music comes in at a very low volume, which prompts listeners to jack up their listening volume, and then when the host starts talking their voice is SO LOUD compared to the music that listeners jump and hurry to turn down their listening volume.

There is a happy medium and it’s the job of the podcast engineer/producer to properly mix the levels of the intro music and the host of the show.

Generally speaking, the music should be loud enough to convey the effect it’s meant to convey, but not too loud where it drowns out the hosts voice.

With a little attention, practice and reflection you can learn how to mix these levels really well and ALL listeners will APPRECIATE it without ever knowing that they’re appreciating it, which is the goal of professional audio production 😉 …and that’s a podcast engineer’s job well done!

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And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

The Boy Scout motto is: Be Prepared. This applies to every situation in life and it also applies to podcast recording sessions.

When I say be ready at least 5-10 minutes before each session, I mean be COMPLETELY ready to go, now, right now.

One of the worst things you can do is show up late, unprepared, and then make everyone else wait while you set up equipment, change various settings, turn off your phone, and get some water, etc.

It shows respect to everyone else involved when you are PREPARED.

It’s not difficult, either. And it will eliminate all those anxious feelings you feel when you show up last minute unprepared. That peace of mind alone is priceless 😉

Do you have this habit?

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And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”

For convenience most people connect their computer to the internet using a WiFi connection. When it comes to recording good quality audio over the internet, a weak and/or unstable WiFi connection can potentially cause issues like dropouts, disconnections and synchronization drift. If the WiFi connection is strong there shouldn’t be any of these issues.

A much faster and more stable connection method is to “hardwire” a computer to the internet using an ethernet cable connected to a modem or router. The resulting data throughput is much faster and smoother that using WiFi, which means there’s almost no chance of experiencing dropouts, disconnections or drift.

I especially recommend being hardwired for podcast engineers/producers who are recording their clients’ sessions online using Riverside, Squadcast or Zencastr, etc.

What’s your connection method and does it suffice?

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And please keep in mind, the Daily Goody is only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these posts to be long, earth-shattering masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of and completely transform you into a world class podcast engineer. “Little by little, a little becomes a lot.”