Author: Chris Curran

The Zoom H8 is the latest version of Zoom’s popular recorders.

It does A LOT, including being used as an interface, and costs around $399.00

From their website:

12 simultaneous recording tracks, interchangeable capsules, and an App-driven touchscreen interface, the H8 is designed to meet all your audio recording needs.

24-bit/96kHz, 12-track Field Recording System and USB Audio Interface with 2 XLR/TRS Combination Inputs, 4 XLR Inputs, 4 Microphone Preamps with +12/+24/+48V Phantom Power, Included XY Microphone Attachment, and Included Software.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

Listen very deeply to two of your favorite songs and note down all the details you hear.

This is a wonderful exercise in critical listening which will help quite a bit with regards to training your ears.

What voices do you hear? What instruments? What effects? Changes in intensity? Placement of the instruments in the stereo spectrum? The tone of each? Etc etc etc.

Free your mind 🙂

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

Have you heard of Podcast Gym? Our good friend Andy Wang, host of Inspired Money, has created a website and podcast containing advanced insights for improving your podcast — check out the Podcast Gym website and podcast!

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

Have you ever heard podcast producers (or their companies) being credited at the end of their clients’ episodes?

Some clients on their own choose to read these types of credits at the end of each and every episode, while others do not.

I believe some podcast producers/editors/engineers actually ask their clients to credit them at the end of episodes. Fair enough. Personally I don’t ask for credit, but if the client decides to do it I’m appreciative.

If you or your company are credited at the end of client episodes will that help bring you more clients and more business? One of my previous clients who had HUGE download numbers credited my production company at the end of every episode (2 per week for 3+ years) and I didn’t receive a single inquiry about my services due to those shoutouts (which is not odd or weird in my opinion because listeners are there to listen to that show, not to learn about podcast production companies).

What are your thoughts?

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

Crossfading is easy and important.

Here’s a good description of crossfading from this article at Sweetwater:

Amateur recordings are chock-full of abrupt volume changes, audible clicks, and unnatural transitions. These unwanted effects are caused by discontinuous waveforms — a common consequence of splicing audio clips together. So how do you prevent these? You could make all your cuts at zero-crossing points (during moments of silence), but that’s not always practical or possible, and it’s definitely time-consuming. So how do you make smooth edits? That’s where crossfading comes in.

Crossfading creates a seamless transition from one audio clip to another using a quick overlapping fade-out and fade-in. And it’s easy — start by overlapping the end of the earlier audio clip with the beginning of the later one. Apply a crossfade of about 10ms (this is program dependent, so it varies depending on whether you’re editing drums or vocals, for instance) so that the earlier item fades out at the exact same time that the later item fades in. Then adjust the crossfade duration until it sounds right. This will create a clean transition rather than a jarring one and avoid unpleasant sonic artifacts. Many DAWs include a function that automatically creates crossfades when you overlap audio clips.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

How to use a multiband compressor to remove plosives?

1. Simply use one band from 0 Hz up to around 110 Hz. Sometimes you’ll have to go a bit higher (140-150 Hz) or not as high (80-90 Hz) depending on the frequency range of the plosives themselves.
2. Use a high threshold so that only the plosives are compressed.
3. Use a high ratio to push down the plosives considerably when the compressor does catch them.

Voilà.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

Have you ever started “recording” an episode but after a few minutes realize that you actually NEVER clicked or pressed record?!?!

Most podcasters experience this at least once and it’s actually a good learning experience.

Here’s an episode where I forgot to press record and after 5 minutes of talking we had to start over, which we mention and laugh about in the first minute here.

How about you — have you done this?

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

I bought the relatively expensive El Rey compressor from Acustica almost a year ago and have tried on many podcasting voices. But I still haven’t been very impressed with it and I’m not currently using it at all. I haven’t given up, though. Maybe someday I’ll put it on someone’s voice and love it. But for podcasting I believe there are many other plugins I would recommend buying before this one.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

Studio monitor placement is very important because it affects the sound a lot.

Here’s a nice article from PreSonus: https://www.presonus.com/learn/technical-articles/studio-monitor-placement

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

I saw and heard this ribbon microphone on this episode Bandrew Says Podcast and NOW I WANT ONE SO BAD!!!

It’s the AEA KU5A Hypercardioid Ribbon Microphone.

It’s so smooth and I would love to hear my own voice smoothed out that way.

It’s on sale now through September 30th, 2020 at Sweetwater for $999.00 (normally it’s $1,199)

Should I treat myself or save my money?!?!

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

Listen to your own podcast, or any podcast you produce, in all these places because any audio-quality shortcomings will reveal themselves:

• Earbuds
• Car speakers
• Built-in computer speakers
• Your phone speakers
• Boombox
• Bluetooth speaker
• Home stereo system
• Your TV’s speakers
• External computer speakers

All of these speakers reproduce sound differently.

THE ONLY GOAL HERE is to use your observations to tweak your production so that your episodes sound better everywhere.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

Enjoy watching me do post-production on episode 186 of The Podcast Engineering Show featuring guest Dan Hughley of Focusrite! Total running time is 1 hour 28 minutes

VIDEO LINK: https://youtu.be/1ZqZnSOXOhM

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

Here’s an article from a few years back titled A top audio engineer explains NPR’s signature sound.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

I haven’t used this plugin because I set my final loudness of episodes using RX7, but others seem to find the Waves WLM Plus Loudness Meter very handy.

From their website:

The Waves WLM Plus Loudness Meter plugin provides precision loudness measurement, metering, correction and adjustment tools for broadcast, movie trailers, games, packaged media and more. Fully compliant with all current ITU, EBU and ATSC specifications, the WLM Plus offers comprehensive Momentary, Short Term, Long Term and True Peak readouts, as well as a unique warning and logging system that keeps track of your levels, alerting you when you’ve exceeded them – or fallen short. WLM Plus also features Gain and Trim controls for correction of loudness levels and a True Peak Limiter, which save you the need to utilize additional equipment or software. Ideal for content creators, post production houses and cable head-end facilities, WLM Plus is an affordable, all-in-one cross-platform, multi-format loudness metering software solution.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

Do you leave any blank space at the end of episodes? Or do you end episodes immediately after the last word is spoken?

Most of my episodes and client episodes end with music, so I fade out the music and then end it without any extra blank space.

What do you do?

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.

If you’ve had a long day producing audio and you’re ears are becoming fatigued, consider finishing the episode(s) the next day when your ears have recovered.

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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.”

.