Author: Chris Curran

There ARE recording services (see below) that make this question obsolete, but first…

In a way, there are two types of podcast guests and different ways to handle each one:

1. The guest who hosts his/her own podcast show. If a guest happens to host his/her own podcast, and therefor already has a decent microphone and the ability to record themselves locally, it’s usually not an inconvenience to ask them to record themselves locally and send you the file later (via Dropbox, etc.). I do this.

2. The average person who never records audio on their computer. 99% of non-podcasters do not know how to record themselves locally, and if you try to walk them through downloading and installing software, etc., you will spend lots of time feeling incredibly frustrated. I never do this.

*Thankfully there are services like Squadcast, Zencastr and Riverside – they record each of your guests locally on their computer without them knowing it! After the recording session you download everyone’s individual file. In terms of audio quality, this is by far the best way to connect and record remote guests.

Do you have any thoughts to continue this conversation in the comments below?

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Podcast engineers can earn very good money by offering a type of “white glove” service: Being present in online recording sessions to help soundcheck all participants (hosts, guests), handle any technical issues that arise (not uncommon) and of course record the entire session including backups.

This way, the client doesn’t have to worry about ANYTHING except conducting a good interview. I’ve been doing this for years and CLIENTS LOVE IT.

NOTE: The engineer is not actually appearing or speaking on the podcast itself, he/she is just hanging out in the background making sure everything runs smoothly.

What do you need to run these kinds of sessions? Of course you’ll need a fast and solid internet connection, as well as availability during business hours because that’s when higher paying clients typically like to record.

Have you ever engineered a clients session Live?

FYI, in the full PES program I spend half of an entire class teaching every single aspect of running these sessions, soundchecking guests (rarely easy), coordinating bookings, the best platforms to use (Riverside, Squadcast, etc.) and much more!

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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 speak a lot about controlling the dynamic range of podcast episodes in order to provide a good listening experience to all listeners.

Loudness Range (which is similar to dynamic range) is the average difference between the loudest parts and the quietest parts – and it’s measured in LU (Loudness Units, similar to dB).

If the loudness range of an episode is too great (like around 10-20) that means the loud parts of your episode will be EXTREMELY loud and the quiet parts will be VERY quiet and difficult for your listeners to hear if they’re listening in an environment that has ANY background noise, which is basically ALL listening environments, of course.

In my experience an ideal Loudness Range for spoken word podcasts is around 4-5 LU. To me this level sounds nicely compressed but still contains enough natural energy and life. Even 3.5 sounds good sometimes.

Auphonic and iZotope RX are two applications that I know of that can measure Loudness Range, and Auphonic can even process your audio to be whatever loudness range you want it to be!

Have you ever measured the Loudness Range of one of your final episodes? It’s eye opening for sure.

FYI, from the iZotope RX Loudness Control User Guide:

The loudness range is computed from the distribution (histogram) of Short-term loudness over time. First, signals more than 20 LU below the average Short-term loudness are thrown away. Second, 10% of quietest and 5% of loudest remaining signals are also excluded from the computation. Finally, the difference between the loudest and the quietest of the remaining signals is called the Loudness range and is measured in LU (equivalent to dB).

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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.”

It’s VERY annoying listening to a podcast episode which has been edited so tightly that there are literally no natural pauses between sentences or between the hosts questions and the guests answers. The listening experience is terrible, like listening through a fire hose instead of hearing human beings speak at a normal natural pace. For me it’s confusing and much more difficult to absorb what’s being said. It’s a big mistake to edit an episode too tightly.

Therefore…

When editing out silence to increase pacing, be sure to maintain a natural sounding gap between:

• Sentences
• Paragraphs
• Questions and answers

And natural means natural for each specific instance; the length of the silence should FEEL right and be appropriate for what’s being said, the emotions behind it, the context, etc.

It _IS_ possible to tighten up gaps of silence _AND_ maintain naturalness.

Do you agree?

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To enhance your podcast production awareness, check out the first bullet point in this article titled The Top 10 Rookie Recording Mistakes — it’s about expecting a plugin preset to do what the name says.

It reads:

“The Mistake: I recently received a project where every track had a channel strip plug-in (fig. 1) inserted to add EQ and/or dynamics. Channel strips are a great one-stop shop for quick processing, but the mistake was that the guitar track had a preset called “guitar,” the female vocal had a preset called “female vocal,” the percussion had a preset called “percussion” — you get the idea. A preset may give the sound you want, but every guitar, voice, percussion, bass, etc. is different.”

My opinion: Presets are good to start with, but 90% of the time they still require a bit of tweaking the settings to make the sound just right. Don’t be afraid to tweak settings!

What are your thoughts?

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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 explain and demonstrate the CLA-2A plugin from Waves and how you can use it in podcast post-production. This a compressor/limiter plugin which tames/compresses peaks and adds a nice smooth analog sound to the audio. It is modeled from the classic LA-2A which is one of the best hardware compressors of all time and used on a zillion of your favorite records.

LINKS: 

• Waves CLA-2A plugin — https://www.waves.com/plugins/cla-2a-compressor-limiter
• User Guide for the Waves CLA-2A — https://www.waves.com/1lib/pdf/plugins/cla-2a-compressor-limiter.pdf
• Universal Audio LA-2A Collection — https://www.uaudio.com/uad-plugins/compressors-limiters/teletronix-la-2a-collection.html

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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.”

Someone recently asked me about using Riverside’s Noise Suppression feature when recording participants who have “noise” in their audio signal.

Riverside describes their Noise Suppression feature as: “Remove background noises such as AC fans, heaters, and other ambient sounds. This does not affect clicks, pops, and other transient sounds.”

Here’s my response to their question about using that Noise Suppression during the recording process:

I haven’t done any testing on the quality of Riverside’s Noise Suppression, but in general I would only RECORD using noise suppression/reduction if BOTH of these are true: 

• I won’t have the ability in post-production to do any noise reduction (which is virtually the same as their noise “suppression”)
• The participant has significant background noise which they CANNOT turn off or remove before we start recording.

And here’s the main reason you would not want to categorically use Noise Suppression on every participant in every recording session: Noise reduction in general can do significant damage to audio if it’s not done properly and/or it’s overdone. If someone has good audio with very little background noise you would NEVER want to use noise reduction on their audio because there’s no need, and because it could degrade the audio significantly.

What has your experience been with recording using noise suppression/reduction?

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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.”

Whether you’re a podcast guest or host, I recommend NEVER using your computers built-in microphone. It’s the worst possible option because it captures TERRIBLE sounding audio quality. It’s truly rubbish.

I realize some folks don’t care about sounding good, but those people are idiots. It’s been scientifically proven that good sound subconsciously results in the listeners liking you more and respecting you more. Plus it’s a whole lot easier to listen to.

Here are simple, good alternatives:

• Use earbuds that have a mic on the cable. (Still not the best, but WAY better than your computers built-in mic)
• Use a USB microphone. (Around $150 will get you a good microphone with stand and windscreen)
• Use an XLR microphone and an audio interface. (This is a more advanced setup and not necessary for the average solo podcaster or podcast guest)

Please share this post with your friend who needs this info!

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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.”

Do you breakdown and put away your equipment every time after recording, or do you leave your equipment set up at all times?

Personally I leave my equipment set up at all times (mic, interface, monitors, headphones, lights, green screen), though I do swing my microphone to the side (on the boom arm). I also cover most of my equipment with dust covers overnight.

What do you do?

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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 open to putting some effort into your own personal future success:

• Write out your 3-month goals in each and every one of these categories: 1. Family Goals, 2. Material Things goals, 3. Financial/Income/Savings goals, 4. Physical/Health/Fitness goals, 5. Career goals, 6. Hobbies/Fun goals, and 7. Spiritual goals.
• Write out your 1-year goals in each and every category above.
• Write out your 3-year goals in each and every category above.
• Write out your 10-year goals in each and every category above.
• Write down which character traits you’d like to dispense with, and which character traits you’d like to develop
• Write down every single thing in your life that you’re grateful for. Every. Single. Thing. Yes, it’ll be a long list 😉
• Contact me to tell me you’ve completed these tasks BEFORE January 1, 2022

I sincerely wish you all the best 🙂

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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.”

Saturation plugins can increase harmonics and make your audio sound fuller and more professional. Different types of saturation include tape, tube, amplifier, transistor, and probably more.

Some of my favorite saturation plugins:

• Scheps Omni Channel (Waves)
• Black Box Analog Design HG-2 (Plugin Alliance)
• Saturn 2 (Fabfilter)
• True Iron (Kazrog)
• BB N105 (Kit Plugins)

I’d love to know — What other saturation plugins do you 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.”