Author: Chris Curran

Opportunities abound!

You can do this part-time on nights and weekends, or you can commit to going full-time with your own podcast production business, start onboarding clients and earn lots of money working from home as a professional podcast engineer/producer.

These days it’s a valuable and in-demand career path to produce podcasts professionally. You could work the rest of your life producing podcasts, working for yourself, making your own schedule, and enjoying the income and self-confidence you deserve. If you’re a professional.

May you start your New Year well. I wish you health, prosperity and long life 🙂

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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.”

Remember in 2020 when lockdowns started and tons of people (including ultra-popular media figures) started Livestreaming, YouTubing and attending Zoom meetings from home? Do you also remember that ALL THAT AUDIO WAS HORRENDOUS SOUNDING?!?!

I do. Most of those folks just dove into creating content using their computer’s built-in microphone AND THEY THOUGHT THIS WOULD SOUND JUST FINE?!?!? Wow. It was brutal.

But over the 2+ years since lockdowns first began, it seems like everyone (thank God) has realized the importance of good audio, purchased a good microphone and now has good (or at least decent) sound.

There are MANY new streamers that I used to watch in 2020 who had awful audio quality, but over the past 2 years they have bought decent microphones and even have it close to their mouths! Yay!

FYI, I believe the microphone industry had its biggest boom ever during lockdowns and afterwards. Can anyone confirm this?

Did you also witness anyone starting with abysmal audio quality, and then realize it, and then improve massively? 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.”

If you’re currently looking to onboard new podcast production clients, Q1 of 2023 is your next best opportunity to have massive growth in your business.

Why?

1. Larger companies can access their 2023 budget money starting in January and this allows them to start new projects like podcasts in Q1.
2. The New Year is when lots of people make decisions to start new projects, including starting a podcast. Usually they’ve been considering it for a while but the New Year provides the spark that finally lights their fire.

Jump into January with massive action and focus if you want to grow your production business!

Oh, and I have this course, of course 😉 HA —> Getting New Clients at Higher Rates

What do you think about January timeframe in this regard? 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.”

Btw, this system is comparable to the RODE Wireless GO II system.

I just bought this system to bring with me on my Holiday travels to record my Mom. I had researched the DJI Mic and the RODE Wireless GO II and decided to purchase the DJI for various reasons.

The DJI Mic comes with:

• Two clip-on microphones which are both recorders as well as wireless transmitters. (It’ll be a pain-free experience for my Mom to just clip the very small microphone to her shirt and forget it’s there.)
• One receiver which can route both mics audio to a video camera, phone, livestream, audio recorder, etc.
• A super-handy charging case which houses and charges both transmitters and the receiver.
• The necessary cables

MORE INFO here: DJI Mic 2-Person Compact Digital Wireless Microphone System/Recorder for Camera & Smartphone (2.4 GHz)

What are your thoughts on this? 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.”

Analyze and compare the sound of these two videos. (below)

This audio comparison demonstrates the importance of good audio resolution and encoding quality, as well as serving as a nice little ear-training exercise 😉

*TO HEAR THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCES, LISTEN TO:

• The clarity of the high frequencies. (Especially the hi-hats, but guitars and vocals, too. The badly encoded version is very “swishy/smeared/blurry” sounding in the high-mids and high frequencies. Terrible.)
• The general level of low frequencies (The good one has plenty of low end and a nice fullness, the bad one has much less low frequency level and therefore sounds very midrangy)

GOOD sounding Unforgiven II:

BAD sounding Unforgiven II:

What is your evaluation of this comparison? 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.”

If you want professional sounding audio, the answer is Yes. But without compression you can still sound good by using good microphone technique.

How/where to use compression when livestreaming:

• Some streaming software, like OBS, contain audio processors (including compression) that you can use to process your voice in real-time when Livestreaming. 
• Some microphones, like the Shure MV7, have real-time compression built into them, which you can turn on and adjust via the microphones app. 
• You can plug your microphone into a hardware channel strip, like the dbx 286s, to compress your voice in real-time when Livestreaming.
• You can use routing software (like Audio Hijack, Sound Syphon or Voice Meeter, etc.) to add a compressor to your voice in real-time when Livestreaming.

Have you ever used compression when Livestreaming? Comment below with your juicy details 😉

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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.”

Yes, 24-bit audio recordings contain 256 times more detail and resolution (!!!) than 16-bit audio. 24-bit audio can record 16,777,216 discreet values for loudness levels (or a dynamic range of 144 dB), versus 16-bit audio which can represent 65,536 discrete values for the loudness levels (or a dynamic range of 96 dB).

However, in terms of recording audio of individuals speaking on podcasts, it’s perfectly OK to record in 16-bit.

NOTE: Audio processors and plugins (like de-noise, de-reverb, etc.) can do a much better job when you feed them 24-bit audio because it gives them lots more information to work with.

QUESTION for you — do you record your raw audio in 16-bit or 24-bit? 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.”

Without sacrificing the quality of your edits, here are 6 ways you can speed up significantly and edit podcast audio MUCH faster:

1. Use keyboard shortcuts for your most used commands.
2. Listen to and verify every edit immediately after making it so when you get to the end of the file you’re done.
3. Don’t even attempt super-tricky edits (like removing the umm from “and-umm”), unless you’re getting paid extra to remove literally every single umm, etc.
4. Speed up playback to 1.5x or more. Sadly, some applications don’t have this functionality.
5. If you’re editing someone else’s podcast and they regularly use lots of filler words and generally have poor presentation skills, work with them (gently) to overcome these deficiencies.
6. Get in the mindset and habit of zipping through your editing quickly while, of course, always maintaining the highest quality editing.

Do you have any other ideas to add to the list? 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.”

In addition to being one of the best sounding EQ plugins available, and in addition to probably being the most feature-rich EQ plugin available, the Fabfilter Pro-Q 3‘s user interface experience is arguably the best around due to how visual, intuitive and helpful it is to the user.

Many podcast editors and producers absolutely LOVE to mix with their eyes as well as their ears, and the Pro-Q 3 literally shows all the frequency levels present in a sound. It even identifies specific frequencies that appear to be spiking above the rest, showing you exactly where and how much you may want to attenuate.

It’s not cheap (~$169), but overall it’s arguably the best EQ available in the world today, and the majority of audio professionals probably concur with this assessment/opinion.

Here’s an overview video from Fabfilter themselves: Introduction to FabFilter Pro-Q 3

You can get a 30-day free trial HERE.

If you already use this plugin, how much do you LOVE IT?!?! Right?

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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 human voice is essentially a mid-range instrument, which means that most of its information resides in the mid-range of the frequency spectrum.

Humans can hear frequencies between around 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz, and the human voice does contain information along this entire spectrum, but the vast majority of the sound (including the most important frequencies for intelligibility) resides between around 250Hz and 4kHz.

A high-pass filter reduces the volume of the lowest frequencies (usually around 60-100Hz and below); it lets “high frequencies pass” through, hence the name high-pass filter. See the EQ curve above.

Basically, when you reduce the level of the lowest frequencies in any sound source, the midrange and higher frequencies will stand out more. Therefor, generally, using a high-pass filter will increase the clarity in a persons voice. Of course you can overdo it, so don’t overdo it! HA

Finally, the HOW TO:

Use a high-pass filter (available in most EQ plugins) to reduce the lowest frequencies. Common practice is to reduce from around 60Hz and below, but sometimes you will need to reduce more, say from 80-100Hz and below. Use your ears to determine how much you should remove to make the voice more clear. But don’t remove too much or else the voice will start sounding small, wimpy, thin and possibly harsh.

FYI, here’s a very helpful and thorough technical article titled Facts About Speech Intelligibility — https://www.dpamicrophones.com/mic-university/facts-about-speech-intelligibility

Did you find this helpful? 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.”