Author: Chris Curran

As the podcast industry continues to expand rapidly, there are many new business people who want to start a podcast to support the success of their business.

If you want to produce podcasts and make a great living doing it, NOW is the time to reach out to folks and be of assistance.

There are many different “grades” of clients you could begin working with – some have money to hire a professional-grade podcast engineer, and some don’t have much money and want everything cheap.

Decide who you want to work with and then go find them.

And then – serve them well and do a great job for them.

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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 addition to backing up your production files using a cloud storage company like Dropbox, it’s vital to have one or more local hard drives for backing up all your files and your clients files, etc.

If your main production computer ever dies a horrible death, you’ll be extremely relieved when you realize that ALL your production files are saved and readily available.

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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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Do imperfections like stumbles and restarts, hitches, pronunciation corrections and stutters pull the listener in and make them pay attention more? Or are they simply distracting.

If you remove all those imperfections will the speaker seem more boring or sterile? And will the listeners mind wander more easily?

Also, what about out-of-the-blue singular background noises? Like a car honk, dog bark, a cup falling to the floor.

How about when you edit podcast episodes — are there some imperfections that you always leave in and others that you always remove?

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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 did the first Waves plugin become available?

• 2001
• 1992
• 2006
• 1988
• 1997

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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’ve ever EQ’d your voice and thought, “Wow, this sounds perfect” then you can easily match future recordings to that EQ sound using EQ Match in iZotope RX.

This is a pretty cool piece of functionality that allows you to EQ one audio recording (let’s say person A) so it has the same frequency curve as another audio recording (person B).

Here’s how you use it:

• First you scan a piece of audio (“B” above) to create a sound profile which you can then save. (Because you love the sound of B)
• Then you open another piece of audio (“A” above) and apply B’s sound profile, which essentially EQ’s person A to have the same EQ curve as person B.

It can be a handy timesaver in various situations.

What are your thoughts? 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.”

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When you’re on-location interviewing various people like a news reporter, it’s good to use an omni-directional mic because this will ensure that you don’t completely miss anything that your subject says. *As long as the noise level of the environment is not super loud.

On problem in this scenario when using a cardioid mic: When you are asking a questions, many times the guest will start answering before you have time to move the mic from your mouth to their mouth, and with a cardioid mic the beginning of their answer will be mostly rejected by the mic and be very low volume. With an omni mic in this scenario, the mic will pick up quite a bit of the guest even when the mic is pointed at you, so you don’t have to worry so much about moving the mic back and forth fast enough to capture every word.

One example of an omni mic for this purpose is the RØDE Reporter microphone.

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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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Ringr is a really good service you can use to record guests over the internet using Chrome or Firefox browsers, and it records each participant locally and then uploads that local audio, which avoids the common problem of glitchy internet nasty sounds. I consider Ringr to be top 3 along with Squadcast and Zencastr. (Listen to my quick comparison of the audio quality of all 3 on this episode of my Podcast Engineering Show)

Ringr is a very stable service which also offers a mobile app to connect guests via iOS or Android!

Also, see my previous post titled My Frustration with Ringr.

But all in all, it’s a very solid and reliable service, and I still pay for it every month in case I need to use it for client sessions when other comparable services which I mentioned above aren’t behaving 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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…but I was quickly able to fix it by clearing the plugin cache and re-scanning my plugins.

I also decided to delete several trial plugins off my machine which I had decided not to purchase.

It always helps to remove clutter, 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.”

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I recorded several Live podcast episode interviews on the exhibit floor of a large conference.

The host and guest used wireless headset mic’s provided by the union folks. They were OK but very cheap. We also had a handheld wireless mic to take questions from audience members.

I ran all three mic’s into my Sound Devices MixPre-6 to record multitrack, and out of the MixPre-6 I ran the audio into a mixer which was feeding the PA system. This way, I could control the level of the PA speakers without affecting the recording levels of the three tracks.

For post-production I’ll have to carefully mute each person when they weren’t speaking because there was significant bleed in each others microphone, plus there was a coffee stand 15 feet away that would periodically grind coffee beans! Just what every recording engineer loves – nasty, intermittent background noise that is virtually unremovable in post.

All in all it was a success and the episodes will end up sounding very 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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Released in early 2019, this microphone has been compared to a Shure SM58 with regards to its sound, although some say it doesn’t sound as good as a 58.

It’s a $99 dynamic XLR microphone, and, well, it’s probably easiest and most fun for you to just watch Bandrew Scott’s excellent review of the RØDE PodMic here: https://youtu.be/6FaBq9DLi_U

Do you use a RØDE PodMic? How do you like it?

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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 year did the following happen?

Thomas Alva Edison, working in his lab, succeeds in recovering Mary’s Little Lamb from a strip of tinfoil wrapped around a spinning cylinder. He demonstrates his invention in the offices of Scientific American, and the phonograph is born.

A. 1877

B. 1921

C. 1901

D. 1894

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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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By doing this you will become more clear on what you’re currently doing, and probably find several processes which you can streamline or update.

Also, it will help you notice any gear or software that you may want to upgrade in order to speed up your production time or enhance your audio quality.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to upgrade immediately; it’s usually best to ponder and plan such purchases for weeks or months.

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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 basic idea and yet extremely important.

When you’re on-boarding new podcast production clients usually there’s lots of communication back and forth. But once you’re in the groove of producing episodes regularly, it’s very easy to stay in autopilot and not cultivate your client.

Cultivating your client is different than servicing your client. Servicing means doing the work – completing and sending the final audio file, etc. Cultivating means developing a better relationship, which of course usually leads to more work and more profit.

Some people are better at cultivating relationships than others, but if you just try to be appreciative and respectful you’ll do fine in the long run.

Ways to cultivate clients:

• Manage expectations
• Connect them to people and information that might help them
• Respond promptly
• Maintain good documentation
• Touching base regularly

What other ways do YOU cultivate your clients?

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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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MP3 and M4A files essentially contain two things – the audio and the metadata.

Once you finish producing the audio and creating an MP3 or M4A file, you should tag the file with metadata including:

• Show Name
• Episode Title
• Episode Number
• Image for the episode (or just use the main show artwork)
• Year
• Genre
• Description
• Copyright
• URL
• There are other fields you can fill in as well but those above are the most important ones

Here are a few apps you can use to tag your episode files (there are undoubtedly many other apps not listed here that you could use as well):

• iTunes (Mac and PC)
• ID3 Editor (Mac and PC)
• Hindenburg DAW (Mac and PC)
• Fission (Mac only)

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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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Of course this depends on episode length, level of detail, number of speakers, playback speed and more, so please share those details as well.

With my clients I use a unique production workflow. Since I’m in the actual recording session and I’m making notes for edits Live as they record, when it comes to post production I don’t have to listen back to every word. Of course I always verify that the recordings turned out OK. Then, for editing, I execute the edits I wrote down, and then scan through the conversation for umms, lipsmacks, etc., as well as places where I can tighten it up as necessary.

So, for me, for a 60 minute episode:

• The recording session takes about 90 minutes total (including connecting, sound checking, etc.)
• The track cleanup and mixing takes around 90 minutes total
• The editing takes around 60 minutes
• The finalizing, MP3 creation and scheduling takes around 30 minutes total

So, how much time do you spend on episode production?

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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 dull sounding recordings I’m talking about here are the really bad ones – like recording a guest through their onboard computer mic when that mic really stinks, or through Skype when their voice is coming through with very little clarity, etc.

First of all, try to avoid this.

But, if you have to perform some magic to get a dull sounding track to sound decent, here are some ways:

• Add high frequencies using EQ. This can help, but of course if you’ll be boosting whatever noise and nastiness is within those frequencies as well, so make sure you don’t add too much and make things worse.
• Remove some low and low-mid frequencies to accentuate mids, high-mids and highs. This really helps but be careful not to remove too much of the body of the sound or else it will sound way too thin.
• Use an aural exciter to add some high frequency harmonics. These harmonics can sound much smoother than a regular EQ, but you still can only add so much before it’s too much.
• Use a transient shaper like iZotope’s or Spiff, etc. These processors will accentuate the transients of the sound like hard consonants, etc., and this can make a dull recording sound more intelligible.

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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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(For Apple iOS devices ONLY)

They look like larger-than-average earbuds with microphones built into both left and right.

And since these microphones are right where your ears are, they are able to capture a “3D” kind of audio soundscape.

If you’d like to use these and incorporate some “3D” sound in your podcast, keep in mind that you will have to publish your audio in stereo. And for listeners to get the full “3D” experience, they will have to listen in stereo, preferable with headphones or earbuds.

I would love to try these, but until I can think of a specific use for them I won’t buy them. Plus, if outdoors, I’m assuming there will be potential noise and distortion from wind, since these don’t seem to have any shielding from the wind. And of course I don’t have an iPhone.

From their website:

What is Binaural Recording? Your ears and brain work together to create a 3D audio landscape of your surroundings. The AMBEO Smart Headset captures this landscape with high quality microphones utilize the actual outer structure of your ears to replicate the same 3D sound image that you hear naturally.

Download the free AMBEO Smart Headset app to access a whole host of advanced features and customization options:

• Control your input level for 3D recording
• Toggle between EQ presets
• Configure Transparent Hearing settings
• Customize the Smart Slider function
• Disable or enable voice prompts

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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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