Author: Chris Curran

Question:

When a participant on a podcast doesn’t speak for a while and then starts to speak, immediately their audio volume spikes loudly for a second or two and then comes back to a normal level, and remains normal for the rest of the time that they continuously speak. And this happens throughout the episode every time they start speaking after they are silent for a while. How to handle this in post-production?

Answer:

The most likely reason this happens is due to the apps that are processing the person’s audio — like Skype, etc. Many programs use ACG (Automatic Gain Control) and/or compression (and who knows what else) to adjust a person’s volume ON THE FLY depending on their input level — meaning that if a person is really quiet, the ACG will boost their volume, but as soon as the person gets get loud the ACG will lower their volume, and so on.

To avoid this issue, you can (and probably should always) turn off ACG in Skype, and usually you’re able to turn it off in other programs, too.

And what’s the solution in post-production? A couple options:

1. Use a compressor with a medium/fast attack time (1-30 milliseconds) and slow release time (around 2-5 seconds, which is 2000-5000 milliseconds). Then adjust the threshold so that their loud parts are compressed a bit but their normal level parts are not (or hardly) compressed at all.
2. In your DAW software using volume automation, manually bring down the level of their loud parts, making sure to fade the volume gently so the effect is transparent.

I’m sure there are other solutions, too.

How do you handle this situation?

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…for podcast production: (fyi, this is not an exhaustive list)

• iZotope Ozone — I use this one sometimes. It has many modules including EQ, Multiband Dynamics, Maximizer, Exciter, Vintage Tape and more. You can also use each module as an individual plugin within your DAW!
• Auphonic — Mostly used by podcasters to level the final episode to the official unofficial LUFS standard (-16 LUFS for stereo and -19 LUFS for mono). And now Auphonic can actually add compression and limiting to make your episodes have a specific dynamic range measured in Loudness Units (LU). It doesn’t include EQ or any other processing, so I would consider this a stripped down version of mastering, yet very handy for the average podcaster for sure.
• Individual plugins chained together — You could put a bunch of plugins on your master buss in your DAW and adjust them to taste. These could include EQ, compression, limiting, etc. Personally, I usually use Aquamarine 4 (dual-stage compressor) on my Master buss.
• Plugins that come with your DAW — I think first of Adobe Audition which has lots of great processing right inside the program. You could just apply a mastering preset to the entire mix and voila. Other DAW’s have processing, too, so investigate what processing comes native with your DAW.

What do you use in your mastering step, if anything? 

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Some podcast episodes feel painfully slow, drawn out, and energy-less because one or more participants is speaking at a very slow pace. As an editor you can help remedy this by editing the audio a bit “tighter” than usual to increase the perceived speed of the episode.

NOTE: If a guest or host is dreadfully boring and slow you won’t be able to completely fix that!

As an editor, here are some things you can do to increase the pace of an episode:

• Shorten long spaces (between question and answer, between an answer and the next question, while someone is silently struggling to find the right words, etc.)
• Umms and stutters (the usual)
• Repeated sentences (usually short sentences like, “Yes, I truly believe that. Yes, I truly believe that.”)
• Removing an entire question and answer (especially when the guest’s answer was essentially the same as their answer to another question)

One final note: You can only do so much in post-production. The “performances” of the hosts and guests will set the pace. Hosts can learn to be more energetic and succinct, etc., but unfortunately guests will be what they are and there’s no changing that.

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…because your faculty of hearing is vital to audio production…

Here’s some solid foundational information from audiologist/audio engineer Dr. Derek: Ear Wax Removal – How to Clean Your Ears (Best Practices) – https://youtu.be/bxEFJfcxLi8

FYI, he says usually people don’t need to do any earwax cleaning because their ears will shed/eject the wax on their own.

As always, you should ask your doctor (or mother-in-law, etc.) to decide what is best for you.

Even though I’ve seen so many people saying that Q-tips are bad, I VERY GENTLY use Q-tips approximately once per week and I DON’T GO DEEP AT ALL. I’m extremely conscious and careful. And sometimes I forget for 2 months.

Do you have any earwax cleaning methods or habits?

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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 using multiple microphones in the same room, the angles you face the mics will impact how much separation (or bleed) there will be between microphones.

Inevitably some of each individuals voice will be picked up by every mic in the room, but you want to minimize that bleed so that each voice can be more distinct and separated, and therefore more intelligible.

If you have 2 microphones: Participants should face each other and the mics should face directly away from each other.

If you have 3 microphones: Point the microphones 120 degrees away from each other.

If you have 4 microphones: Point the microphones 90 degrees away from each other.

If you have 4+ microphones: Good luck. The best advice I can give you is to MAKE SURE that each person is speaking REALLY CLOSE to their 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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Squadcast is a service you can use to connect with remote guests and cohosts to record podcast episodes. It’s similar to Riverside, Zencastr and others, but each of these services has their own unique features.

Squadcast records video and audio at very high quality, and it records both locally on every participants computer to avoid any internet glitching, etc.

It’s a good service with a good team of guys and gals creating and managing it.

For all the details visit their website: https://squadcast.fm/

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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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Reaper is not regarded as the go-to software for podcasters, and some folks even claim that Reaper is no good.

But Reaper is an amazingly powerful DAW with tons of features and plugin compatibility.

Here’s a post describing all the great things about Reaper (keep in mind the author writes mostly in terms of music production): https://www.gearslutz.com/board/cockos-reaper/1131358-why-reaper-has-owned-world.html

I’m not capable of arguing for Reaper because I don’t know all of the technical specs, etc., but my experience with it over the past 7 years has been great in terms of look and feel, performance, stability, plugin compatibility, etc.

Plus, the incomparable Garth Humphreys loves Reaper! Here’s the episode with he and I discussing Reaper and lots more: https://podcastengineeringschool.com/garth-humphreys-pes-038/

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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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Never forget: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

FYI, the introductory post on background noise is here.

Here are 3 basic things you can do to minimize background noise:

1. Choose a place to set up your studio which has the least background noise (see list of noises below)
2. Keep your mouth very close to the microphone when speaking (1-4 inches away)
3. Use a dynamic microphone instead of a condenser because condensers typically pick up lots more background noise.

Noises you want to be aware of and then minimize:

• Inside your “studio:” Air ventilation ducts, computer fans, squeaky chairs, etc.
• Outside your “studio” but inside the house: Other people in your house making noise (kitchen noise, TV’s, kids playing…), pets making noise, etc.
• Outside the house: Passing cars and trucks, lawn mower noise, rain, dogs barking, 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 diaphragm is the part of the microphone that vibrates in sympathy with the sound waves that come in contact with it. The sound waves vibrate the diaphragm and then an electrical signal is generated based on these vibrations of the diaphragm. This electrical signal is what needs to be boosted by a microphone preamplifier.

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Keep in mind these are all electrical signals.

Microphone level (The output level of a microphone is relatively weak and needs to be boosted up to Line level using a microphone preamplifier)

Line level (The standard level at which audio signals travel through gear, mixers, etc. and the level at which recordings are made)

Instrument level (The level coming directly out of an electric guitar, etc. which also needs a preamplifier)

Speaker level (The level needed to drive a speaker, which is MUCH stronger than line level)

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I opened Fractal Recording in 2012 in New Jersey. It was a physical podcast studio and I started recording podcasts for local business people. They would come into my studio with their guest and I would record their episodes.

Then in 2015 I moved to Colorado Springs and went virtual. Now I “meet” with my clients and their guests in my virtual recording studio (using Riverside, Zencastr, Squadcast, etc.) to record their episodes.

The physical setup can work really well if you are a local networking all-star. And you could also do virtual sessions from your physical studio as well.

But doing things virtually requires much less overhead, equipment and time, 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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In reality, a podcast editor can charge client using either of these methods.

In my experience, clients like it better when you charge them per episode because then there are no surprises when you bill them.

Of course, if a particular episode requires significantly more work than your agreement specifies, then you should charge them a bit extra for that episode.

And it’s of vital importance to be clear with your clients on the scope of work for each episode, what you will be doing, what you will not be doing, 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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Because adding a bit more compression, EQ and limiting, etc. to the entire episode in the very last step of production can make a big difference in terms of perceived loudness, tightening up the mix, evening out levels of voices (slightly), and polishing the low and high frequencies.

Plus you can usually fix any small mixing mistakes in the mastering step, too. For instance, if one participant’s voice is a bit louder than the other participant, a bit more compression will tame or reel in the louder voice, and by comparison bring up the level of the lower voice.

And once you come up with mastering settings that you like, you can pretty much use the same mastering processing for every episode.

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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 may have different names for these two types of edits, but here are my definitions of these terms:

Content Edits: Removing entire questions and answers, reordering sections, removing parts of questions or answers, choosing between repeated questions because the host asked the same question twice because the guest asked the host to repeat the question, etc.

Audio Edits: Removing things which don’t alter the words or message but make the audio easier to listen to. These may include umms, stutters, long sections of silence, lipsmacks, extraneous background noises, interruptions, etc.

If you’re editing someone else’s show, be sure to be REALLY clear on what types of editing you’ll be doing and not doing.

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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 can be difficult.

Usually it’s the host who has a decent audio setup that sounds pretty good with normal low end (because they have a decent/good mic), and it’s the guest that sounds really thin if they are on the phone or using a bad headset, etc.

The voice with more low end is always going to sound much “bigger” than the thin voice, which can deceive your ears a bit when you’re trying to make these two voices the same level.

Some possible remedies:

• One trick is to remove some low end from the voice that HAS lots of low end in order to try to match it to the thin voice. This may provide a better listening experience to the listener.
• Trying to add lots of low end to the thin voice will rarely work, and sometimes it’s actually impossible like when someone is recorded on the phone where there are basically no frequencies below 300 Hz. It’s hard to boost something that’s not there.
• Leveling each of these disparate sounding voices to the same LUFS level may help get their level in the same ballpark, but usually you will manually have to adjust their volumes so they sound good together.

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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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These are the two most popular USB podcasting microphones on the market:

• Audio-Technica ATR2100USB (or ATR2100x-USB)
• Samson Q2U

And they both have an on/off switch on the microphone itself.

The problem is that when you turn the switch on or off, there’s a loud click/thud noise. So if you were to flick that switch when recording a podcast, you would hear a loud click/thud on your track.

Now, if you’re going to do lots of post-production anyway, it’s not difficult to delete these noises in post.

But if you’re streaming Live or you just want to avoid these noises…

…there is a way:

When you flick that switch on or off, don’t actually flick it, move the switch AS SLOW AS POSSIBLE – like REALLY SLOW – and the click/thud that is created will be MUCH lower in volume.

The more gently you switch the switch, the quieter the click/thud sound that comes through.

Note: You will want to practice this because it takes a slow hand.

Now go listen to the song “Slow Hand” by The Pointer Sisters for more tips. Hehe

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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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