Author: Chris Curran

De-breath plugins intelligently lower the volume of a person’s breath sounds. (iZotope RX Breath Control, Waves DeBreath, etc.)

Some podcasters, producers and editors really can’t stand the sound of breaths; some try to lower their volume, others cut them out altogether! It’s a matter of taste; though I will remind you that breaths are completely natural and listeners are used to hearing other humans take breaths when they’re speaking. Plus, 99.9% of all podcasts you hear DON’T remove or lower the volume of breaths.

I rarely use de-breath plugins because:

1. It’s extremely rare that a person’s breaths are obnoxiously loud and distracting.
2. It’s extremely difficult to dial-in the settings of a de-breath plugin perfectly so that it reduces ALL the breaths AND simultaneously leaves everything else alone. Most times the plugin will miss certain breaths and NOT reduce their volume, which can result in a weird, erratic sounding track which can sound MORE distracting than the original. Also, plugins can mistake a word or part of a word for a breath and then reduce its volume, ruining the intelligibility of certain words.
3. Usually a better overall technique is the “Emily Prokop” technique where she clips and moves all the loud breaths onto a separate dedicated track in her DAW. Then she lowers the volume of that track so all the breaths are at a lower, more tasteful volume.

Unless someone’s breaths are super loud and distracting, I wouldn’t even worry about breaths – they’re natural.

Do you pay any special attention to breaths in your podcast 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.”

If you’re currently outsourcing your podcast audio production to someone else, and you’d prefer to save that money instead, I’m here to tell you that if you’re willing to learn a bit you can definitely produce your own podcast audio.

You don’t have to attend PES or a 4-year program either — you can learn some basics and produce very good audio yourself.

HINT: By avoiding basic audio issues during the recording process you can virtually guarantee good sounding audio with very little effort 😉

Of course, if you literally don’t have time to produce your own audio that’s understandable.

By producing your own audio you’re developing a significant lifelong skill, too, and that’s worth A LOT!

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.”

Who do you know around the age of 18-25 who plays a musical instrument?

I’m asking because those folks are literally primed and ready to learn how to produce podcasts for living and then earn $100k+ per year working from home. Yeah, really.

Lots of younger folks are struggling to find their way, so if you know someone who plays a musical instrument or loves audio in general, please tell them about Podcast Engineering School.

Better yet, put them directly in touch with me 😉

Thanks for helping me change so many individuals lives for the better.

There’s nothing better than when a graduate of Podcast Engineering School becomes a true professional and takes control of their financial success and starts bringing in serious income. Truly life changing for them.

Much Love,
Chris

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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.”

I appreciate you letting me know in the comments below 😉 or tweet at me @PodcastEngineer

Which would you rather see me do on video?

1. Clean up a bad recording
2. Demonstrate a new plugin
3. EQ someone’s voice
4. Compress someone’s voice
5. Discuss my 5 favorite plugins for podcast production
6. Purchase and unbox a new Blue Yeti
7. Demonstrate my voice on 5 different microphones

Please comment below!

I appreciate you,
Chris

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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 wondering whether you should publish your final episodes in stereo or mono, here are a few ideas to consider:

1. If every element of your episode is mono (voices, effects, music, etc.), _AND_ you haven’t panned _ANY_ of them left or right, then you should publish in mono because your audio _IS_ mono. By the way, publishing a mono audio file in stereo doesn’t change or enhance the sound — it only doubles the file size, thereby unnecessarily causing you to publish a larger file (which with some hosting companies will cost you more money) _AND_ forcing listeners to download or stream a larger file (which for some will more quickly eat up their limited monthly mobile bandwidth).
2. If there are _ANY_ stereo elements in your episode, I recommend publishing in stereo. (unless you have some limit on file size, etc.)

NOTE: The majority of podcasts use stereo intro music and publish in stereo, but some still opt to publish in mono (which is totally fine). Be aware that publishing stereo music in mono may cause it to sound a bit weird to some folks, but it’s not a major deal — it’ll just sound a bit flat, dimensionless, etc.

Do you publish in stereo or mono, and why?

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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 lipsmacks and mouth noises aren’t avoided in the recording process, then removing them in post can happen in several different ways:

• For big loud lipsmacks it’s usually better to remove them manually in the editing process.
• Regarding smaller mouthclicks: If there are only a limited number of mouthclicks, cutting them by hand is OK, but if a particular podcast participant a bazillion mouthclicks then Mouth De-click in iZotope RX is a lifesaver. Also Spiff from Oeksound can do a good job removing mouth clicks.

What’s your strategy with lipsmacks and mouth clicks? 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 don’t avoid capturing plosives in the recording process, you’ll have to deal with them in post-production.

Here are several ways to remove plosives in post:

• The De-plosive module in iZotope RX
• A multiband compressor to specifically crush the plosive frequencies which are usually in the range of around 120 Hz and below. Use a high ratio with very fast attack and release, then adjust threshold so that the compressor is only compressing the plosives.
• FYI, here’s the worst “solution”: Use a high pass filter to roll off the frequencies below ~120 Hz. The problem with this “solution” is that it will not only reduce the plosives but it will remove a significant amount of fullness and body from the sound, which can make the person’s voice sound a bit thin, weak or wimpy.

Also note that De-noise processors will NOT remove plosives.

Is there another method you use to remove plosives? 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.”

(FYI, see my post on What is Oversampling?)

Reaper now offers oversampling on individual plugins and plugin chains!

NOTE: Currently many plugins will not be able to handle more extreme (8x or 16x) oversampling, so listen carefully for weirdness when using Reaper’s oversampling features. 

Here are two good videos explaining and showing more details: 

• Oversample Everything! Reaper FX and FX Chain Oversampling
• Oversampling in REAPER? – The NEW Game-changing feature

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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.”

(FYI, here’s a post explaining oversampling and aliasing)

Superplugin from DDMF is a plugin that does many things. One handy and specific thing I’d like to highlight here that it does up to 16x oversampling during realtime playback (and 64x oversampling during offline rendering) for plugins that don’t offer oversampling!

Here’s a good video with more details and examples, etc.: Make Your Waves Plugins Sound Better | With Superplugin from DDMF.

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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.”

Oversampling is when a digital processor internally increases the sample rate of the audio to avoid aliasing.

Aliasing is when one frequency is coded as a different frequency; when inaudible distortions above the Nyquist Frequency (half the sample rate) are interpreted by the D/A converter and mapped to frequencies within the audible range. (Here’s a good article on Aliasing, etc.)

Without oversampling, processors like saturation and distortion can create significant audible aliasing/artifacts that you may not want.

For the most commonly used processors, EQ and Compression, oversampling is not usually needed.

In general, for podcast audio production you don’t really need to worry about oversampling unless you’re using saturation or distortion as an effect, and even then you may not need or want oversampling. Keep in mind that sometimes you may even prefer the un-oversampled sound 😉

Here’s a good video explaining and showing more details: Oversampling Explained

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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.”