Author: Chris Curran

A lot.

But seriously….., although that was serious… 😉

Your answer, which you must arrive at in your own mind and heart, depends on several factors:

• The work involved in producing the client’s episodes. (straight-up interview, or extreme RadioLab-style production, or something in between?)
• How many episodes total are you producing as per the agreement.
• The total time it will take you to produce each episode.
• How quick of a turnaround time the client is expecting for each episode.
• Any other factors that are important to you. Spend some time thinking about this.

NOTE: Also see Deciding to Edit Other Shows for Money

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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 engineers first tried to put music onto vinyl records, they ran into a huge problem – the low frequencies in the music would make the cutting needle go so deep into the vinyl, as well as cut too wide a groove, that the vinyl would be ruined.

How did they solve this problem?

First, before cutting the vinyl records, they would process the audio so that the low frequencies were tamed/controlled enough to not shred the vinyl.

And this step became known as Mastering.

These days the mastering step is still the final step in music and podcast production and mainly consists of using EQ, compression, limiting and a host of other processing to make the final track sound awesome as well as be finalized to the correct loudness level.

FYI, iZotope Ozone is a really good mastering software that I use.

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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 is possible, after removing a particular Umm, that the resultant dialogue feels unnaturally rushed at the exact spot where the umm was previously. Especially if the Umm comes after an in-breath.

So, if you have:

[in-breath] “Umm” [Start of sentence]

…after removing the umm, the start of the sentence may seem to come in too quickly and unnaturally.

Solution: Instead of highlighting the Umm and deleting it, highlight it and make that section silent. Then remove about 80% of the silence, leaving about 20% of the silence there. Now, the edit feels much more natural 😉 Also, depending on the specific Umm you’re removing, you can play with those 80/20 numbers and use 70/30 or 60/40 instead – whatever sound best.

Note: A similar problem can arise when the Umm comes before a breath as well, but the solution is the same.

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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 not pleasurable to listen to a podcast episode where one participant is really loud and the other is at a much lower volume. As a podcast engineer you want to avoid this on your episodes.

The typical old school way to balance the voices is to simply listen back and forth to each of the different voices and adjust the level of each until they all appear to be at the same loudness level. Of course you’ll probably be adjusting EQ’s and compressors along with the overall volumes of each track.

Another way to quickly balance the levels of various participants is to process each participants track to be the same LUFS level. This will make them close to level, but you will always want to adjust the levels slightly using your ears. Because even when the LUFS level of two different voices is the same, the perceived loudness of each voice can differ due to things like proximity to the mic, dynamic range, frequency response of the mic, the timbre of individual voices, etc. So it’s a handy practice to set the LUFS level of each participant to the same value, but then you still have to use your ears 😉

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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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Back up all files immediately 😉

To save time and make sure things always sound good, it’s good to keep your studio in a state of readiness to record, which means finding all the settings that work well and then not changing those settings unless you have to. On the fly during some sessions, however, you may need to adjust various settings to optimize the sound and levels, etc., so that by the end of the session some of your settings are quite different. After these types of sessions, it’s a good practice to return all these settings to their original positions. Same goes for any unique hardware setups like extra microphones you had to setup or iPads for sound clips, etc.

Also, one thing I do immediately after recording sessions, while the sound of each participant is still fresh in my mind, is process each track using iZotope RX7 to clean them up and level them, 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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Sometimes at the beginning of episode recording sessions something will go wrong – the guest will accidentally disconnect or someone’s mic stops working, etc.

Instead of pressing stop on your recorders, many times it’s better to keep the recording going (or as engineers say, “Let it roll.”) instead of stopping it, creating a new session, and pressing record again. Even when my clients are recording themselves locally, I instruct them to never stop the recording once we start.

This way you avoid the confusion of having several files afterwards. Also, it’s very easy to edit out parts of the “one big file” in post-production.

Now, I’m sure there are situations when you will want to stop everything, fix a problem, and then restart the recording, so use your judgement.

Also, if you’re using a platform like Zencastr, Squadcast, Ringr, etc., verify in advance how they handle stopping and restarting sessions, etc. Some make it easy, and some make you actually create an entirely new session for which you’ll have to email everyone a new link to connect, etc., and that’s a lot of hoops to jump through.

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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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Fact: Many remote guests have no idea how to connect online to record a podcast episode. They need guidance.

It is extremely helpful to communicate with the guest in advance to set the expectations for the recording session in terms of:

• Day, time and length of the recording session
• Preferred microphone and headphones, etc. (also give them options in case they don’t have a real microphone, etc.)
• Internet connection speed best practices
• Link to join the recording session
• A phone number to call in case they aren’t able to connect online

You may feel like you’re going to overwhelm them by sending them all this information, but it must be done.

Oh, and by the way, I wish I didn’t have to tell you this but — many of the guests won’t even read all the information you send them in advance; they will just attempt to join you at showtime, so you will have to go over some of the preparatory information with them once they connect.

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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 are many phases of audio production and many software choices for each phase.

Sometimes you can use the same software for several phases, for instance Adobe Audition can be used for multitrack recording and mixing as well as detailed editing. Also, some audio production programs allow you to enter all the MP3 tag information as well, etc.

The key is to identify which software you want to use for each step, keeping in mind simplicity, the amount of friction in the workflow, and how comfortable you are with each software. Until you’ve found your perfect software workflow, it may be helpful to do some research and perhaps try dome different software.

Inevitably you will find programs that just feel right and fit your personality, etc. I know I’ve opened many programs which everyone else said were great and I just thought, “Yuck!”

When I switched to Mac about a year ago, I had to find a new stereo editor that I liked and it took me a while. I had been using SoundForge Pro on PC but their Mac version is really not good, so I had to hunt for something that felt right to me. Eventually I found TwistedWave and I like it, although it isn’t perfect 😉

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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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Once you start to train your ears for audio production you will begin to hear lots of things that you never heard before.

One of those things is the host and/or guests table tapping! Also clicking pens and squeaky chairs.

In general these noises are not a huge problem with podcasts, but they can distract listeners a lot, and even drive some listeners crazy enough to turn the podcast off and never listen again!

These noises highlight the amateurish production value that most podcasts have. In my opinion, this amateur production quality is why podcasts are not as popular as they could be. Think about it: Jennifer in Alaska clicks play for her first podcast listening experience ever and hears lots of noise, umms, dreadfully slow pace, distracting background noises, way-too-loud intro music, and she thinks to herself, “What the heck IS this???”

The good news is that all these things are not difficult to avoid. Even remote guests can be “trained” 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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On some microphones there are physical switches which affect the sound of the microphone.

It’s good to know what switches are present on the microphone you’re using so you can adjust them if necessary, especially if a switch somehow ends up in the wrong position making the audio sound bad or not audible at all.

Some common microphone switches:

• Bass roll-off (attenuates the very low frequencies)
• Pickup pattern (or polar pattern, which determines from which direction the mic will pickup sound)
• Presence boost (boosts the upper mid frequencies)
• Attenuator Pad (which lowers the output of the microphone for use when recording loud sources)
• Headphone jack and volume control
• Mute switch

So, if you’ve never really looked closely at the microphones you’re using, perhaps inspecting them will enlighten you in some say 😉

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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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“Cleanliness is next to Godliness” is a well-known quote alluded to in one of my all-time favorite movies, Gattaca.

In terms of your podcast production, one way that your equipment and studio can become a difficult mess is with the way your cables are setup. Of course if you have just one cable then this is easy, but when you start having lots of cables this becomes an issue.

When I was in NYC working on music production I was taught to keep ALL cables neat and tidy at all times. And we used a lots of cables in most sessions.

The main reasons to keep all your cables neat and tidy:

• Having the ability to EASILY add, remove or re-run cables
• Having the ability to EASILY troubleshoot any problems
• Keeping audio cables as far away from power cables as possible
• Working in a neat and tidy environment allows the people working there to focus entirely on the work instead of being distracted by messiness

And I actually spend significant time THINKING about how I want to run my cables BEFORE I actually run them. Planning – it helps 😉

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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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A little-known perk of attending Podcast Engineering School is lifetime membership in the closed community of alumni and students.

This is especially handy because as alumni go out into the world and get more experience producing podcasts, inevitably they stumble upon problems and issues.

By the way, “getting experience” is code for “having to figure out solutions to a zillion problems you never knew existed.

That’s where the community comes in very handy. Whenever you have a question you can get answers and feedback from the other alumni as well as me, your lead instructor.

On the flip side, when I or an alumni finds a great new plugin or a elegant solution to a common production problem, they post that in the group and we can all learn from their experience.

In the big picture, it’s good to have a posse at your disposal 😉

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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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At some point, most podcasters have the idea that, “Hey, I could edit other peoples shows and earn some extra money! Maybe several shows and earn lots of money!”

It can be a good idea for those folks who enjoy the process of editing and processing podcast episodes.

The Reality: If you take on a few clients and are successful with them, you will earn some money, develop your production skills and hopefully have some fun. But if you take on a few clients and things don’t go smoothly for you and you have to back out of your commitments, then your clients will have to struggle to quickly find someone else to take your place and you will certainly not feel very good about yourself or the whole situation.

So before you actually embark on this journey, if you want to avoid failure and a big hit to your credibility, there are two main ideas you may want to consider because they will play vital roles in your success or failure:

1. How many episodes will you realistically be able to produce every week? To figure this out, decide on how many hours per week you will realistically be able to spend working on episodes, and then divide that number by how many hours it will realistically take you to produce one episode.
2. What is one hour of your production time worth to you? You certainly don’t want to end up earning $5 per hour, right? So map out different scenarios and decide on what you’re HAPPY to earn. This will ensure your satisfaction and longevity.

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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 say “kinda” because these podcasting loudness levels are not exactly “standards” – they are simply good and useful recommendations which the vast majority of podcasters abide by.

When the final MP3 of one of your episodes is published and folks start listening to it, it’s very handy if the loudness of your episode is approximately the same loudness as other podcasts’ episodes. This gives the listener a better podcasting listening experience; they can avoid cranking the volume of their earbuds for one show and then immediately getting blown away by ultra-loudness when they switch to listen to another podcast.

So here is how loud your final episodes “should” be:

• If your episode is a mono file, -19 LUFS
• If your episode is a stereo file, -16 LUFS

The last step of your audio production for each and every episode should be to adjust the LUFS level of your episode to these “standards.”

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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 are many ways to edit a podcast episode and many techniques, too.

Regarding general editing philosophies there are basically two extremes and then, of course, everything in between.

One extreme: The not-even-edited audio which is left to sound exactly the same as it was recorded, which usually means lots of umms, lipsmacks, long pauses, flubs, noises, etc. Some podcasters like this philosophy because it takes zero work and they want their audio to be “real.” To me this philosophy can work if the host and guest(s) move the show along at a good pace, but if not then the episode will drag way too much and be painful to endure.

The other extreme: Heavily edited to remove every umm, lipsmack, flub, noise, repeated statements, etc. – and also removing every natural pause and authentically timed moments – oh, and removing every single breath that the host and guest takes. Some podcasters like this philosophy because their audio doesn’t contain a wasted second and the pacing is quicker. To me this philosophy sounds too inhuman and unnatural.

What’s your editing philosophy?

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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 ever want to or need to, you can take a regular recording of a regular microphone and process it so it sounds like that audio was recorded over the phone.

It’s easy:

Use an EQ to remove the frequencies below 300 Hz and remove the frequencies above 3 kHz.

Of course it will sound like a very clear telephone call because actual phone call audio contains lots of other noise and are processed heavily 😉

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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 find yourself using the same layout of tracks in your DAW for numerous episodes, it’s really handy to save your initial configured layout as a template so you can avoid having  to set up each and every session from scratch.

Session templates can include:

• The track layout
• Any music or audio clips that are the same for each episode
• Any effects on specific tracks or the Master buss (along with their settings)
• Any subgroup routing, etc.
• and lots more

You can even create multiple templates in case you produce multiple shows or various types of episodes, 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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