Author: Chris Curran

Sometimes podcast guests mumble or trail off at the end of sentences, etc.

At times they speak so softly that the listener will have trouble hearing those parts.

Using compression helps raise the level of these sections in relation to the loud and normal  parts.

But sometimes you have to go caveman and manually boost the level of particularly quiet parts. Basically you highlight the quiet section in your software and boost it like 4, 8, or 12 dB etc.

One thing to be careful of: Boosting it too much making it sound too unnatural.

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Some people are heavy breathers in general, and others APPEAR to be heavy breathers because of the proximity of their microphone to their mouth.

If someone is wearing a headset (not earbuds, an actual headset) and the mic is situated under their nose, it will pick up a lot of breath sound. It’s best, during soundcheck before recording, to ask them to move the mic to a position that doesn’t pick up their breaths as much.

Dealing with these types of breathing sounds after they’ve been recorded is not difficult, but it may take quite a bit of time to clean things up.

A few thoughts:

• Deleting/silencing their breaths when they’re not speaking is usually the best way to clean up their track.
• Using a gate will not usually work well. Because if the breaths are loud they will open the gate and get through, and if you set the threshold higher so the breathing doesn’t trigger the gate then the gate will start cutting off the beginnings of words, etc.
• Be careful using Auphonic’s leveling and gating features together, as it can sometimes amplify erroneous noises, including breathing sounds.

As always, it’s better to avoid a problem than have to fix it later 😉

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If it’s your microphone and you control the preamp — never.

If it’s your guest and you control the preamp — never.

If it’s an internet guest and you do NOT feel confident that they can follow your directions as you walk them through their computer settings to turn up the mic level — you may want to accept a low recording level. But not if it’s TOO Low. If it’s REALLY low then you have no choice but to walk them through raising the level. Have fun!

And BTW, this pertains mainly to folks using Windows machines. If they have a Mac it’s actually not that difficult to direct them to System Preferences, Sound, and the Input level slider.

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Guests on podcasts, obviously, can’t be required to speak properly and avoid all the crutch words and bad habits that amateur unskilled orators typically use.

Hosts, on the other hand, CAN, if they wish, hold themselves to a higher standard by learning the basics of speaking that are fundamental to the activity they are performing – namely, speaking to many people simultaneously.

And one of those bad habits that hosts can STOP doing is lipsmacking.

Of course, most people who lipsmack a lot do it unconsciously — but should anyone host a show unconsciously???

When I was in Toastmasters about 10 years ago I was amazed to learn that when one member was giving a speech, a few of the other members were evaluating the speaker in order to give feedback later — and one this they evaluated AND COUNTED were lipsmacks!

Encourage hosts to up their game!

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Some audio software companies, in order to run their software on your machine, require you to download and store your license on a special USB device (a physical iLok) that holds you licenses, and if you don’t have this USB device plugged into your computer, the software won’t run.

The good news is that these days, instead of needing the actual USB device, lots of companies allow you to have an online iLok account which takes the place of the physical device.

I have many different plugins that require an iLok account and thankfully all of them don’t require the physical device. All I need to do is register the plugin on my machine using my iLok account, and then the plugin is essentially “registered” with my machine so I don’t need the physical device.

And many plugin companies don’t use iLok at all, like Waves, Fabfilter, iZotope, etc.

From the iLok website:

How does it work and why do I need one?

The iLok is a special USB device that holds your licenses for iLok-enabled software. Software publishers use the iLok to provide secure protection for their software. When you run their iLok-enabled software, it looks for the software license on your attached iLok.

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Ever since I’ve been producing audio using a computer I’ve always needed a physical volume knob which I could use to control the volume of my monitors.

And yes, I say NEED because the thought of me relying on a some dinky volume control slider on the screen, or up and down arrows on my keyboard is excruciating.

I need to be able to grab a knob and turn it with my hand to adjust the volume of my monitors. Period.

So I’ve been using a Palmer MONICON Passive Monitor Controller, which has been working just fine.

But one of my students just bought the Mackie Big Knob and that seems like a much better product than what I’m using. And he loves it.

Here’s what he had to say about it: “It is so smoooooth… perfect volume control for my monitors, knob is sitting right in front of my keyboard. Connects to two sources and two sets of monitors. Passive, so no power is needed.”

Plus it has a DIM switch, which I miss 😉

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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 it takes a long time to learn something new, usually because you don’t have enough dedicated uninterrupted time to learn everything in one sitting. Usually you are able to learn and practice a little, then return to it again and again when you have time. And then after weeks or months you feel skillful and comfortable with all the aspects of it.

Personally I like taking my time to learn new software and plugins. Mostly plugins these days. And I feel that there’s a real benefit to learning a little at a time over weeks or months.

One of the biggest benefits is allowing my subconscious to “digest” what it recently learned, and then the next time I open the software I find myself noticeably better at operating it.

It reminds me of a seminar I once attended where they asked us each to juggle for 3 minutes even though we had never juggled before. Not surprisingly, I just kept dropping the balls and couldn’t juggle at all. Then we sat down and the presenter kept on teaching. After 30 minutes we were instructed to do the same exercise again the same way we had done it before, and in my VERY FIRST attempt I was able to juggle for like 3 or 4 repetitions! And for the next 3 minutes I was able to have many periods of juggling briefly. Why was I able to do it after 30 minutes of doing NOTHING? Because during those 30 minutes my subconscious was integrating everything I had “learned” from my first failed attempt at juggling.

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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 upload audio to Soundcloud, they ALWAYS re-encode it for playback.

If you upload a wonderful-sounding MP3 file, they will AGAIN re-encode it to AAC 256 kbps. Even if you upload an AAC 256 kbps, which apparently is the format they want, they will AGAIN re-encode it as another AAC 256 kbps.

So, you should always upload uncompressed files to Soundcloud – for instance WAV, FLAC, AIFF, or ALAC because re-encoding an already compressed file will degrade the audio quality significantly due to generation loss.

If you have previously uploaded your tracks to Soundcloud in a lossy format, you can re-upload your uncompressed tracks by following these steps.

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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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It’s common to ask hosts and guests to back up and restate part of their statement if they flub something. This makes it possible later to edit out the flub cleanly so no one ever knows that it even happened.

But something specific usually happens to people when they flub something – they laugh.

And then, to the horror of the podcast editor, they restate some of their previous statement WHILE THEY ARE STILL LAUGHING! And then continue talking while still laughing a bit.

This makes it almost impossible to edit because the result will sound really awkward; for instance after cutting out the flub, half of a sentence will be spoken clearly and calmly, and then the second half will be said while laughing. The listener will be confused because they have no idea what happened, and will say to themselves, “That’s weird. Why did that person start laughing mid-sentence?” Usually in those cases I don’t make the edit; I will leave the flub because that’s better than an awkward edit.

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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 bought a bunch of new plugins and I’ve started to experiment with them, including creating a new “base line” plugin chain which I will apply to each voice and then tweak, of course.

This is such a great learning experience: Starting from scratch and optimizing a new plugin chain. It gives me a chance to hear things from a fresh perspective and refine the sound quality.

This process also does wonders with regards to sharpening my ear.

So far the results are excellent. My clients voices sound better than ever! Though it does take a lot of time to experiment with the new plugins and dial things in… but I love the process! And the results!

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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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AirPods are not able to be recorded in Zencastr because their sample rate is, I believe, 16kHz, and Zencastr requires a sample rate between 44.1 kHz – 96 kHz.

Have you used another recording platform to successfully record a person using AirPods? (besides Skype)

FYI, I believe the sample rate of AirPods are 16 kHz, but I couldn’t find confirmation of this.

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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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Shotgun mics are extremely directional, meaning they pick up whatever you point them at, and they reject everything else to various degrees. The polar pattern is usually Supercardioid.

In podcasting, broadcasting and movie production, shotguns are mostly used for on-location recording when you want to capture a speaker and not pick up ambient noise as much. Alex Blumberg from Gimlet uses the Audio-Technica AT8035 shotgun mic when he does his on-location interviews.

Also, some voiceover artists prefer a shotgun mic – often the Sennheiser MKH 416.

Here are a few shotgun mics:

• Audio-Technica AT8035
• Rode NTG-2, Rode NTG4, NTG-3B
• Sennheiser MKH 416

And FYI, some people end up “pulling the trigger” and buying a shotgun mic. HAAAA – Oh come on, it’s funny! …..yeah, I know. [sigh] ….Carry 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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If you’re driving a car and you roll down your window, a low frequency will be produced due to the air flowing in, out and past your open window. Technically this is the Helmholtz Resonance, the same principle that makes a bottle hum when you blow over its open top.

Interesting: If you also roll down the passenger side window, the frequency will cut in half.

Can you hear the difference?

Drive safely!

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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 I spend time checking out how others are producing audio in terms of philosophy, techniques, tricks, new plugins, software, etc.

Specifically I like to watch the best engineers in the world discussing and teaching audio production.

And guess what – they are all focused on music production because there are no videos on serious podcast production. That’s why I’ll be starting to make those videos myself soon on YouTube!

Also, if you’re not subscribed to the Podcastage YouTube channel (gear reviews and tests to help you improve your podcast and YouTube audio/video), you may want to check it out.

FYI, Bandrew Scott of Podcastage was my guest on episode 77!

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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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There’s no better way to energize and accelerate the success of your podcast editing business, your podcast show, etc. than by attending good conferences that are relevant to your goals.

Conferences have played an immense role for me in the podcasting space.

Every year I attend:

• Podfest
• Podcast Movement – next one is in August 2019 and I’ll be the emcee of all the technical track presentations! Find me and say hi 🙂

I realize it costs quite a bit of money to attend due to flights, hotels, food, and your ticket, but if you’re serious about your endeavors in the podcasting space it is worth it.

Of course, NOT attending is an option as well. Maybe you’re happy with your current growth and trajectory, which is great!

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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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Written by Nick Messitte, iZotope Contributor on April 11, 2019. Here’s his full post.

While working on a podcast, I was given a transcript of the relevant audio, and a bunch of raw interviews from which to pull quotes. Many of the quotes were finished sentences—statements where the person had clearly finished their thought with a period, full stop, end-of-story cadence.

Or so it appeared in the written transcript. The audio, however, told a different story: the person had more to say, hastily jumping into their next thought. This “next thought” wasn’t germane to the original point at all—hence the cut in the script—but human beings aren’t tidy machines. They don’t speak in the same way as writers write. Run-on-sentences are par for the course.

This can sometimes be frustrating for audio editors, for if a person jumps too quickly between one thought and another, you’re left with a most unnatural edit point. That’s what happened on this podcast. I found myself with sentences that just didn’t end clearly.

The solution:

Dialogue Contour came to the rescue many times in this project. Using the module, I was able to close the sentence in a natural way. The operation was simple—I isolated the phrase, clicked in a node at the end of the phrase, and subtly brought the pitch down.

The result? A completed thought. This, combined with fading a bit of room tone underneath the subject as they ended their sentence, solved the problem.

Here’s his full post.

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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 back up all my production files locally on several redundant hard drives, and I also keep a backup of the past 6-12 months files in my Dropbox.

I believe I pay $100 each year for 1 Terabyte (TB) of storage. That’s 1,000 Gigabytes.

Around 6-12 months after an episode has been published I will remove those files from my Dropbox to make room for newer episode files.

I like having many backups – several locally and one in the cloud.

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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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