Author: Chris Curran

When a client wants to assemble a “Best of” episode containing clips from various episodes throughout the year, it’s great to have WAV file versions of all previous episodes to cut clips from.

This way you maintain the quality of the original episode audio, as opposed to editing and re-encoding MP3 files which will cause a generation loss of quality.

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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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Loudness Penalty is a cool website I found which will scan your audio and tell you if and how much the big platforms will adjust your loudness level so it complies with their platform standards.

Their site says:

Find out if your music will be turned down by YouTube, Spotify, TIDAL, Apple Sound Check and more. Discover your music’s Loudness Penalty score, for free.

Also, I asked the folks at Loudness Penalty if any of the platforms have different loudness target for podcast episodes as opposed to music tracks. Here is their reply:

“To date, platforms use the same standard for loudness normalization on all of their content, so there are not different values for speech or music streaming. Of course this could change in the future, so we would update Loudness Penalty if it’s necessary.”

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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 a podcast guest who literally said the word “Right” about 300 times.

The funny thing is – I didn’t really notice it during the recording session!

But in post-production it became painfully apparent, so I had to start chopping them out like mad.

And fyi, it wasn’t for my show 😉

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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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Check out the free iZotope plugin called iZotope Vinyl!

It could be used for some cool sound effects, and it’s fun to play around with.

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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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When recording directly into a computer using a USB microphone or earbuds, be careful with cranking up a microphones level all the way for a participant who is in a reverby room.

If the mic gain is cranked up too high, it will most likely cause the sound to be severely limited (compressed/crushed) by the computer and/or app, causing a lower signal to noise ratio, making the reverb and noise floor much louder compared to the person’s voice.

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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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This plugin is Free until February 14, 2020.

It’s called Celestial – a channel ctrip plugin from Acustica.

Channel strip plugins are handy for podcast production because they contain several different processors in one plugin. Celestial includes saturation, EQ, filters, compressor, and stereo spectrum processors.

I’ve been playing with it and I really like it.

FYI, first you have to download and install their installer application called Aquarius, then open Aquarius and install the plugin there.

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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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Sometimes a guest will struggle connecting their audio over the internet and I often have to hold their virtual hand and walk them through the myriad settings and steps necessary for them to be connected properly and sounding good using whatever equipment they have.

Most soundcheck take around 5-10 minutes, but occasionally soundcheck can take 30-60 minutes depending on the guests equipment and computer savviness. Usually after a long struggle all the technical difficulties are sussed out and the interview can start, but sometimes the audio-ruining issues cannot be overcome and we have to give up. In those cases we often revert back to calling the guest on the phone which of course results in audio that sounds quite bad. This concession can also have the effect of sucking lots of energy and/or enthusiasm out of the participants due to the fact that a 30-60 minute struggle produced absolutely no good results. But, the show must go 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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I haven’t tried the Sound Siphon application but apparently it’s similar to Audio Hijack which I love. FYI, both are Mac only.

Sound Siphon makes it easy to capture your Mac’s audio. Use it to create virtual input audio devices that send audio from one app to another. Or, record right in the Sound Siphon app.

Our friend Allan Tépper covered Sound Siphon in BeyondPodcasting episode 13 when he discussed it with Rob Greenlee, and also in this article.

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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 bought this USB C to Ethernet Adapter so I can hardwire my phone to the internet!

It’s so great to plug my phone in and download and update apps, download new podcast episodes, check social media – all at ridiculously high speed.

Plus it sidesteps my mobile data plan 😉

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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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Have you ever heard of the Heil PR30? Most podcasters and producers/editors have heard of the often-exalted Heil PR40, but have never heard of the PR30.

The PR30 has a bit hotter output than the PR40 so it will require a bit less preamp gain.

PR30 frequency range: 40 Hz to 18 kHz

PR40 frequency range: 28 Hz to 18 kHz

I haven’t tested them back to back so I can’t comment on any tone differences.

FYI, on an upcoming episode of my show I’ll be using the Heil PR30 so you can hear what it sounds like.

And BTW, I know that my previous guest Jonathan Messinger from The Alien Adventures of Finn Caspian was using a PR30 as his main microphone. Not sure if he still is, though.

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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 any recorded audio sounds terrible and has lots of major problems, there’s no way to magically fix everything 100% and make it sound great. New podcast editors/producers don’t understand this, but after one experience of spending 3 hours banging their head against the wall trying to fix some nasty piece of audio hopefully they have an epiphany.

Let us all endeavor to capture good quality audio!

Fact FYI: Podcasting is mainly comprised of people who know absolutely nothing about audio, let alone the ultra-importance of capturing good audio. I’m not criticizing anyone, I’m just stating a fact that we need to acknowledge if we want to do a better job helping everyone produce better audio.

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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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Ever wonder how plugins that model classic analog hardware are made?

Here’s a good article on the entire process that Waves uses: https://www.waves.com/how-waves-modeling-captures-analog-magic

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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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Please name the shows as a comment below, and if possible link to them as well 😉

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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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Work from anywhere and earn really good money. That’s the dream for many people.

Editing/producing podcasts for others can fit the above criteria nicely, if you know how to pull it off.

And learning how to pull that off is now a distinct possibility because you can attend the Podcast Editors Conference!

I’ll be there.

It’s happening on March 6th in Orlando, Florida, which is also the pre-day of Podfest (amazing conference!). You can attend both for a really good deal – details here.

There will be MANY individuals there who have committed to helping you build a profitable editing business.

Think about that.

Lots of people willing to help YOU.

Perhaps you should consider attending 😉

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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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In the not-too-distant past, music was mixed down to 1/2” tape in the studio.

When we recorded mixes onto 1/2” tape, the tape itself would subtly change the sound of the mix – adding a bit of warmth, tape compression and cohesion, and making the mix sound even more pleasing.

These days there are tape emulation plugins that will have this same effect on your podcast episode mixes and some people really love this effect.

It’s certainly not 100% necessary to use tape emulation in your podcast production, but in conjunction with many other professional tactics, the compounded effect can make a huge difference in your sound.

Two emulation plugins that I have used and liked are Fabfilter’s Saturn plugin, and iZotope Ozone 9’s Vintage Tape module.

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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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Simultaneously, while the session is playing back, Reaper allows you to split clips, delete clips, move clips, slide clips, adjust clip settings, and lots more.

This expedites editing quite a bit because you can let the playhead roll and listen for any necessary edits, and at the same time you can do other “housekeeping” edits like removing sections of silence, removing unwanted noises, adjusting clip volumes, fade clips, etc.

Emily Prokop (previous guest on my show!) does this really well, and you can watch her do Live Editing on Facebook.

My word, Reaper truly is awesome.

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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 have 3 voices (each on their own track) in a podcast episode and you want to use the same plugin (say, a multiband compressor) on each of the 3 tracks, essentially you have two choices:

Put an instance of the multiband compressor on each of the 3 tracks. In this case the computer has to process 3 separate plugin instances.

Buss all 3 tracks to a vocal subgroup and put an instance of the multiband compressor on that vocal subgroup track. In this case the computer only has to process one plugin instance, which will lessen CPU usage and speed up rendering time quite a bit.

On my typical vocal subgroup when mixing podcast episodes (and I don’t always activate every single one of them, but) I use multiband compression, saturation, limiting, reverb, de-essing, and perhaps one or two other secret sauces 😉 Booyah!

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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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