soothe2 is an excellent plugin; I’ve used the original soothe plugin for years and soothe2 is a major upgrade. Intelligent and transparent – it tames harshness, sibilance and muddiness. It’s much better than a traditional de-esser.

A message from its creators:

soothe2 has been redesigned from the ground up. It will feature a fully revised algorithm, along with a number of new features:
– Completely overhauled processing algorithm
– Full frequency range operation
– Attack and release speed adjustments
– Two different processing modes for different uses
– Full mid/side processing
– Lower latency
– Lower CPU load all-together, along with an even lighter Eco quality setting
– Quality settings can be adjusted separately for offline rendering
– Rewritten graphics rendering to offload most of the GUI drawing to the GPU for improved FPS even on older machines
– Sidechain input

soothe2 has been in the works for a long time, the development starting soon after the release of the original plug-in. Since the original soothe, we’ve redesigned and reimplemented our whole codebase for better performance and improved maintainability. For soothe2 we’ve evaluated a lot of excellent ideas and feedback received from the users of soothe. A lot of the ideas have made it into to product. We’re grateful for all the feedback and support we’ve received over these couple of years: thank 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.”

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What podcasting gear is used on Joe Rogan’s podcast?

Here’s a nice article describing their setup.

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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.”

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The Apogee Symphony Desktop audio interface will be available in Q1, 2020.

From their website:

Flagship Sound Quality. Vintage Mic Preamp Emulation. Apogee Hardware DSP with Premium Plugins. Immersive Touch Screen Interface.

Symphony Desktop for Mac, iPad pro and Windows packs the legendary sound quality of Apogee’s rack-mount Symphony I/O Mk II into an elegant and inspiring 10×14 audio interface that sits on your desk and fits in your bag. With Symphony Desktop, musicians and producers are empowered to record, overdub and mix with the music industry’s most respected AD/DA converters and mic preamps.

By combining superior performance, with new features like mic preamp emulation, the Symphony ECS Channel Strip plugin and ultra low latency recording with hardware DSP and Apogee native FX plugins, Symphony Desktop will amplify your creativity in your studio or on the go and give your recordings the Apogee sound quality Advantage.

Symphony Desktop: $1299

Symphony Desktop FX Complete*: $1399 (*Includes Pultec EQP-1A, Pultec MEQ-5, ModEQ 6, ModComp and Opto-3A plugins, a $499 value)

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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.”

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Here’s a nice article explaining the spectrogram/waveform display in iZotope RX.

From the article: A spectrogram is a very detailed view of your audio, representing time, frequency, and amplitude all on one graph. The spectrogram can let you see at a glance where there is broadband, electrical, and intermittent noise, and allows you to easily isolate audio problems by sight.

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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.”

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If I have a choice between “other” work and audio production, I ALWAYS want to do the audio work immediately. And try new plugins – LOL

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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.”

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Ampify Studio is a new desktop product available for Windows and Mac from Ampify.

Podcasters could create their own royalty free, custom theme music. It’s designed for people who are novices at creating music. It is free and includes royalty free sound packs that can be used to create tracks. You can sign up for the beta and they’ll send it to you.

From their website: Make music in minutes. We know how hard it can be finding that spark of inspiration, that’s why we’ve made Ampify Studio. Build ideas easily and go from ideas to arrangements in a few clicks. Within minutes you’ll be exploring musical ideas. Get started now and realize your musical creativity.

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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.”

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The right saturation on podcast voices can make them sound less naked/wimpy and more full sounding and pleasing.

It’s kind of a subtle thing, though.

I use saturation (among other things) on a subgroup of all the voices in each episode:

• True Iron by Kazrog (analog transformer emulation)
• Saturn by Fabfilter (Warm Tape preset or Clean Tube preset)

I don’t always use both of them at the same time, because overdoing it is not good.

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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.”

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Recently I helped a guest host record a monologue segment. She was reading a pre-written article and she spoke very quickly – too quickly.

So in post I first tried time-stretching her track to slow her pace but it ruined the audio quality by introducing all kinds of weird robotic sounds.

So then I tried creating a Reaper session just for her monologue and slowed down the playback while maintaining the pitch. This worked well and sounded fine. I rendered it out of Reaper as a WAV file which I then added to the full episode session.

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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.”

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(Note: Curtis Judd made a really good video explaining and demonstrating this)

From Sound Devices:

Using multiple microphones with your MixPre? Enable MixAssist to reduce unwanted microphone and room noise while recording. Sound Devices’ renowned algorithm, once available only on the 6-Series, 7-Series, and 8-Series, is now available as a plugin for the MixPre-3, MixPre-3 II, MixPre-6, MixPre-6 II, MixPre-10T, and MixPre-10 II.

Download at the Sound Devices Plugin Store.

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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.”

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I recently recorded my singing bowl using a Sennheiser MKH416 into a Sound Devices MixPre-6 for use on my Meditate With Chris livestreams.

To get the cleanest recording (because the singing bowl is not very loud), I had to wait until an airplane passed by, and also had to breathe VERY lightly while recording this. And of course I temporarily shut off the HVAC system so no air would make noise flowing through the vents.

To capture delicate sounds properly you have to be very careful.

Anyway, my recording is not great but it’s pretty cool: ()thank s to the nice tone of the bowl itself)

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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.”

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After a recent recording session where the guest had terrible plosives, I told him that he could get a windscreen to put on the mic to reduce the plosives, and he said, “Oh, one of those came in the box with the microphone!”

It was a Samson Q2U microphone, and they send a windscreen with the mic.

He thought the windscreen was only for recording outdoors. So I told him to always use it whenever he is recording.

The lesson for me was: If the guest has nasty plosives because they’re not using a windscreen, ASK them if they have a windscreen 😉

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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.”

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Audio Test Kitchen is the world’s most comprehensive online audio product comparison platform, enabling you to hear the true personality of any piece of gear from anywhere in the world. Audition and compare 300 microphones!

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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.”

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All of a sudden on my local recording of my mic I heard some scratching sounds, mini pops and clicks, intermittent noise…

Luckily this happened when I was testing some new settings on my channel strip, NOT when recording an episode. Whew!

So I started to troubleshoot where this noise was coming from. It’s the first time I had to troubleshoot something like this in a LONG time, so it was kinda fun (mostly because I was under NO pressure to quickly solve the problem). I started unplugging things, replacing things, ground-lifting gear, circumventing gear, trying different mic’s, etc.

It ended up being my mic cable – a Mogami cable that I have running through my Heil boom arm.

So, temporarily I have another cable connected to my mic, but not running through the Heil boom arm because I have to disassemble the boom arm to get the old cable out and the new cable in.

What I may do is take this opportunity to upgrade to the O.C. White boom arm that I have my eye on 😉

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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.”

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Does the x stand for extra?

How is this new ATR2100x-USB mic different from the ATR2100-USB that we’ve all liked for many years?:

• Record up to 24-bit, 192 kHz (up from 16 bit, 48 kHz)
• USB-C connectivity
• ~$50 higher price

Of course the most versatile aspect of this mic (and the original) is that it has USB and XLR outputs which can be used simultaneously.

From Audio-Technica’s website:

The ATR2100x-USB is a versatile content creation microphone, designed for live performance, podcasting, and voiceover use. This rugged handheld microphone offers two outputs: a USB output that connects to your computer or other device for digital recording, and an XLR output that connects to a sound system’s conventional microphone input for use in live performance. The ATR2100x-USB also offers a high-quality analog-to-digital converter (24-bit, up to 192 kHz) for excellent fidelity, and a headphone jack with level control for direct monitoring from the microphone. Its cardioid polar pattern reduces pickup of unwanted sounds from the sides and rear. The mic includes an on/off switch and comes with two 2 m (6.6′) USB cables (USB-C to USB-C, USB-C to USB-A) and a 3 m (9.8′) XLRF-to-XLRM cable for maximum versatility. A sturdy tripod desk stand with folding legs is also included for use on tabletops.

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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.”

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If you’re recording audio from a microphone and you have the mic in your hand and you’re moving it around, for instance to interview people while walking around on the floor of a trade show, the noise of your hand handling the mic will be audible in the recording to some extent.

Some mic’s have low handling noise, which means the handling sound won’t come through in the recording so much.

Other mic’s pick up lots of handling noise making the recorded audio sound terrible or even unusable.

If you’re ever planning on handling a mic while recording, make sure to do some tests beforehand to make yourself fully aware of the handling noise (or lack thereof) that will be present in any recordings.

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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.”

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Occasionally a funny thing happens to a podcaster (with zero previous audio experience) after they’ve published around 10+ episodes of their podcast – they go on social media and start giving audio advice as if they’re a seasoned audio engineer.

Most of their comments and advice are shallow, uninformed, oversimplified and incorrect.

They show no respect for professional audio production.

They brag how easy it is to produce good audio but their own show sounds pretty bad.

And you know my philosophy about podcast audio quality for most podcasters – it just has to be good enough for people to hear it and understand it – there’s not an absolute need to produce really good professional audio. It helps if your audio is great, but it’s not necessary.

So I’m not being an audio snob, I just want you to understand the truth so you don’t make a fool of yourself, or worse – perpetuate the WRONG idea that new podcasters shouldn’t even consider the quality of their audio before recording and publishing.

Picture two painters standing side by side:

One is a house painter and says, “Yeah, just open the paint cans and paint the side of this house, and do it quickly – the quicker we get it done the more money we can make.”

The other is a fine artist and says, “To create a work of art I use 97 different colors of paint and I pay close attention to the finest details. It takes me months to finish a painting, and my goal is to create a masterpiece.”

Now, what if the house painter said to the fine artist, “Bro, just throw the paint on the canvas and finish quickly – don’t bother with so many colors – and don’t worry about mere details like portraying the face of the subject precisely – just get it done!”

Yeah, you get it.

And a reminder – I’M NOT SAYING that being a “fine artist” of podcast production is NECESSARY, but audio production definitely IS an art, and the resulting audio quality from the “artist” is not even in the same league as the house painter.

“Those who think producing good audio is easy don’t know what good audio is.” ~Marcus DePaula. Seconded by Chris Curran. The motion carries 😉

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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.”

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