Author: Chris Curran

Double-ender is a term describing the situation when both the host and remote guest record their own microphone audio locally. Afterwards the guest sends their local recording to the host who uses that track in the episode production.

To converse online for the interview they may connect using Skype, etc., but instead of using the Skype audio in the final episode, each participants local recording is used instead.

In my experience it’s relatively rare to have a guest who knows how to record themselves locally, which is why many people use services like Zencastr and Squadcast because they basically record a double-ender without the guest ever knowing it.

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This plugin models the tape saturation of some of the vintage tape machines at Abbey Road Studios.

Here’s the description from the website:

Waves and Abbey Road Studios present the J37 tape saturation plugin, a precision model of the very machine used to record many of the greatest masterpieces in modern music. With a variety of user-adjustable controls including Tape Speed, Bias, Noise, Saturation, Wow and Flutter, the Waves: Abbey Road J37 faithfully recreates the inimitable sonic signature of the original machine. In addition to the J37 itself, three exclusive oxide tape formulas have been modeled. Specially developed by EMI during the ‘60s and ‘70s, each formula has its own unique frequency response and harmonic distortion behavior. In order to push the envelope even further, a comprehensive Tape Delay unit has been added to complement those warm tones.

The Waves Abbey Road J37 tape emulation plugin will bring stunning analog warmth to your digital recordings, delivering a level of hardware realism never before experienced “in the box.”

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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 you attend a conference you meet many people, and some of them you exchange contact information so you can connect after the conference to discuss things.

So how soon after the conference ends should you reach out to these folks?

If you reach out too early, they may still be traveling home and your message may get lost in the craziness of their travel, etc.

If you wait too long to reach out, they may have forgotten you and why you wanted to connect with them.

So what is the right amount of time?

How long do you usually wait to reach out?

Typically I email people 3-5 business days after the conference ends. This seems to work pretty 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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Enjoying Podcast Movement…

And today I give my talk!:

Title:

Advanced Audio Production: Waaay Beyond Just Removing Umms, Etc.

Description:

Want to learn a bunch of expert tricks you can use to make your podcast sound professional? There are concrete reasons why some podcasts sound better than others. Learn what the pro’s already know.

You will learn:

• How to quickly train your guests before recording to ensure a clean recording
• How to use plugins, EQ and compression
• How to mix the host, guests and music so they sound great together
• Editing tricks
• The mastering step

And don’t forget:

Podcast Engineering School is offering a $350 discount for the upcoming semester starting Sep. 10th, 2019 using the promo code PM19

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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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Today me and lots of other folks are heading to Podcast Movement 2019 in Orlando, FL.

These days I don’t bring much audio gear to conferences. I used to, but I literally never used the gear I brought, so I stopped bringing it. I used to think, “Yeah, I’ll being a few microphones, a recorder, etc and I’ll do a bunch of interviews with other people at the conference.” But I NEVER feel like doing interviews when I’m there because I’m so busy chatting with so many people I haven’t seen in a while, and checking out companies’ booths, etc.

If you ever do bring gear on the road, be sure to pack it securely and be gentle with it.

Whenever possible I will pack a piece of gear inside its original box.

Also, I like to bring all my delicate electronic gear with me on the plane in my carry-on bag. I never want any of my gear to be thrown under the plane with all the other cargo, etc.

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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 2i2 from Focusrite has been one of the most popular interfaces for podcasters for a long time because of its high quality, simplicity and reliability.

Recently they released their 3rd generation of the 2i2.

I’ll be using it on an upcoming episode of my show.

In the meantime, check out a very good review of this interface by Bandrew Scott on his Podcastage channel.

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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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You will probably be most familiar with the sound of whichever albums you have listened to the most over your entire life.

These can come in handy when you want to break in (and learn) a new pair of monitors, headphones or earbuds.

By listening to music that you know extremely well you will become familiar with the “color” of your new monitors. Because all monitors color the sound to some degree.

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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 Facebook group is a good resource and support community for anyone that does podcast production, either for themselves or for clients or both.

Join today and say hello to the group’s fearless leader, the incomparable Steve Stewart!

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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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Lots of podcasters use Auphonic as the final step in their episode production because it does so much, including:

• Level the different voices in the episode
• Reduce background noise and any hum
• Filter low frequencies
• Set the final LUFS level
• Generate the MP3 file
• Tag the MP3 file

You are allowed to process two hours of audio per month for free via their web interface, and their pricing is very economical if you need to process more audio than that.

You can also purchase their software and install it on your own machine and process as much audio as you want 😉

Also, you may want to check out my two interviews with Georg Holzmann, the founder of Auphonic:

• Georg Holzmann – PES 022
• Auphonic’s New Advanced Features, with Georg Holzmann – PES 108

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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 listened to a podcast episode where there is literally no space between different participants speaking? Meaning, as soon as the host finishes asking a question, the guest IMMEDIATELY starts answering, leaving literally no space between the two. This sounds very unnatural, and personally I feel it’s quite annoying to listen to.

Please let the conversation breathe NATURALLY.

Another example of cutting natural pauses too tightly together is when a person is talking and there is literally no space left between sentences. Terrible. Their speaking is way too crammed together, and often doesn’t let the listener absorb what has been said due to the machine gun presentation of the speakers sentences.

How do you make sure your episodes aren’t edited too tight?

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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 attack time of a compressor is the amount of time it takes for the compressor to activate after the signal has gone above the threshold level.

Most compressors allow you to adjust the attack time from about 1 millisecond up to about 150 milliseconds. I frequently use attack times between 1 and 35 milliseconds.

When it comes to the attack times affect on the human voice, it’s a good way of regulating how much of the transient sounds poke through before the compressor squashes them. The beginning of hard consonants is a good example of this – T’s, K’s, B’s, P’s, etc.

Some audio will sound better with more transients remaining unaffected, and other audio with harsh transients will sound better if you squash more of them.

It all comes down to taste, and it also depends on the voice, the mic, other processing, etc.

For instance, if you’re processing a voice that was connected using Skype, sometimes it’s good to have a longer attack time because Skype limits/crushes the audio quite a lot which can sometimes cause dulled transients.

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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 best way to prevent problems like this is to do extensive sound checks before recording an actual session. And if you have several different physical setups, do this for each different setup.

1. Spend the time getting the physical setup right, the equipment connected properly, the signal flowing properly, the recording levels correct, etc.
2. Then actually record some test audio and listen back to it. Do this several times if necessary, tweaking your settings along the way.
3. Then write down all the details of your equipment setup as well as the settings on all your gear. Also, save all your software settings as a template so you can load that template later.

This way, whenever you’re about to record a session, you’ll be able to quickly set up your equipment and software and be confident that all your audio will be recorded properly.

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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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Zoom.us is a very handy tool for online meetings. In fact I use it for my Podcast Engineering School classes.

But for recording podcast interviews online it may not be the best tool available for the job. It only records at 32 kHz sample rate, which means it only captures frequencies up to 16 kHz. And the audio codec they use does a fair bit of damage to the audio quality since they have to compress the audio a lot in order to make real time communication happen.

Services like Zencastr and Squadcast, which were created specifically for podcast recording, are superior in audio quality. Their main advantage is they record everyone’s audio locally and then upload that audio. This method allows everyone’s audio to be recorded at much higher resolution with much better codecs.

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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 is a very good DAW for podcast production for so many reasons. In fact it’s the only DAW I know that was created specifically for radio and podcast production.

For more info on Hindenburg, check out:

• Hindenburg’s website
• My interview with Nick Dunkerley, Creative Director and Co-Creator of Hindenburg
• Tutorial videos made by Bryan Entzminger at Top Tier Audio

Try it free for 30 days 😉

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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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Be careful when having food and drinks in your studio.

Of course you want to avoid:

• Spilling a drink on any gear
• Having food on your fingertips and then touching your gear

I rarely eat anything near my studio gear, but I almost always have a drink off to the side at a safe distance away from any gear.

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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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Whenever you upgrade any of your audio gear, inevitably you have to decide if you should sell your old gear, or give it away, or keep it.

Personally I tend to keep everything for two general reasons:

1. Someday that previously-used piece of gear may come in handy. This seems logical, however this is rare.
2. I’m not experienced with selling used gear. I don’t know where to sell it, what the terms should be, what to do if the buyer complains of accuses me of the gear being non-functional, etc.

Of course, I’m in the unusual situation where, because I teach podcast production, I may want to use or demonstrate various gear for educational or marketing reasons in the future.

But soon I will have to overcome these two reasons and sell some stuff, though. Because I believe there is a point for each of us when you simply have way too much gear sitting around not being used, and will probably never be used.

What is your philosophy regarding selling your old gear?

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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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