Category: Daily Goody

“Envelope, in musical sound, is the attack, sustain, and decay of a sound. Attack transients consist of changes occurring before the sound reaches its steady-state intensity. Sustain refers to the steady state of a sound at its maximum intensity, and decay is the rate at which it fades to silence. In the context of electronically synthesized sound, the term decay is sometimes used to refer to a drop in intensity that may occur between the attack and the sustain phase, and in such cases the time it takes for the sound to fade to silence is called the release.” – Written by: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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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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Podcast Engineering School deliver so much education that most students are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of material, concepts, specifications, and training, etc.

But the great new is that students can re-watch classes anytime forever.

And they also have access to the closed Slack group of students, graduates and me the instructor who can help them with any questions forever.

I really like giving way more training than students expect because all of it helps them become professional podcast engineers who can go out into the world and earn good money and build a career.

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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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Contracts are extremely important when doing business.

For podcast production, here are some things you may want to include in your contracts with clients:

• Length of the contract. How many episodes over what length of time.
• Specifically what you will be doing for them. Include everything: Audio cleanup, mixing, mastering, tagging, uploading to media host,
• Specifically what you will NOT be doing for them
• Specifically what items/info you need from them as well as how far in advance you need it.
• Requirements with regards to you receiving raw tracks at least X number of days before that episode is to be published. You don’t want clients sending you files and saying, “We need to publish this tomorrow morning!”
• Specific pricing for additional work, episodes that go long, extra audio to be added at the last minute, etc.
• Payment terms. I usually require 2 payments – 50% up front, and the remaining 50% when we are half way through the contract.

Of course, each client is unique so you may need to include additional elements in the contract as well.

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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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Archiving your and/or your clients’ production files is a great idea for various reasons, some more likely than others. You may want to go back and:

• Adjust something and re-mix and re-publish
• Delete a portion and re-publish
• Use a segment of an old episode in a current episode
• Use the episode audio in a video production or slideshow, etc.
• Clip out quotes for use elsewhere
• Etc.

FYI, I always archive each and every production file associated with each episode.

And if I need to go back and make an edit, etc., to an episode, I always use the uncompressed WAV file mixes. I will make the edit on the WAV file and then encode the new MP3 from that, instead of editing an MP3 and then re-encoding it as another MP3 (which ends up degrading the audio quality even more because it’s a compressed version of a compressed version).

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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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Ripple delete can be a very handy process for audio editing as well as video editing.

In your DAW, if you use “regular” delete when deleting a piece of audio on one track, it will delete that piece and leave all other tracks and pieces alone.

But if you use “ripple” delete when deleting a piece of audio on one track, all the other tracks will also be deleted over that particular time selection. Essentially, it deletes all track audio for the time selection, and all media to the right is slid left so there ends up being no gap or “dead space.” This is usually the best way to go if you are doing detailed editing in your DAW.

“I believe it’s named ‘Ripple’ because it causes a ripple change effect down the line.” – from Rock Stone on TechSmith.

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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 definition of plosive from Uncle Google is:

adjective
1.
denoting a consonant that is produced by stopping the airflow using the lips, teeth, or palate, followed by a sudden release of air.

noun
1.
a plosive speech sound. The basic plosives in English are t, k, and p (voiceless) and d, g, and b (voiced).

As far as how they sound, it’s a huge spike in low frequencies (usually from 120 Hz and below) which can be jarring and annoying, especially if you have the bass cranked up.

Amateurs don’t prevent or remove plosives, because usually they don’t even know what they are and/or how annoying they are.

Avoiding plosives: When recording use a pop filter or windscreen between the microphone and your mouth. And/or angle your microphone so that the plosive air from your mouth doesn’t hit the microphone directly.

Removing plosives in post-production: Use specific plugins made to “de-plosive” the recording (I use iZotope RX), or use a multiband compressor to specifically crush the plosive frequencies.

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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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OK, but if you’re recording podcasts, you ARE engineering by definition, and if you do it badly your audio may sound terrible. If you don’t want to learn anything about audio or how to engineer you own recordings, hire an engineer, be happy with crappy quality, or stop podcasting.

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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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Double-ender is a term describing the situation when both the host and remote guest record their own microphone audio locally. Afterwards the guest sends their local recording to the host who uses that track in the episode production.

To converse online for the interview they may connect using Skype, etc., but instead of using the Skype audio in the final episode, each participants local recording is used instead.

In my experience it’s relatively rare to have a guest who knows how to record themselves locally, which is why many people use services like Zencastr and Squadcast because they basically record a double-ender without the guest ever knowing it.

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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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This plugin models the tape saturation of some of the vintage tape machines at Abbey Road Studios.

Here’s the description from the website:

Waves and Abbey Road Studios present the J37 tape saturation plugin, a precision model of the very machine used to record many of the greatest masterpieces in modern music. With a variety of user-adjustable controls including Tape Speed, Bias, Noise, Saturation, Wow and Flutter, the Waves: Abbey Road J37 faithfully recreates the inimitable sonic signature of the original machine. In addition to the J37 itself, three exclusive oxide tape formulas have been modeled. Specially developed by EMI during the ‘60s and ‘70s, each formula has its own unique frequency response and harmonic distortion behavior. In order to push the envelope even further, a comprehensive Tape Delay unit has been added to complement those warm tones.

The Waves Abbey Road J37 tape emulation plugin will bring stunning analog warmth to your digital recordings, delivering a level of hardware realism never before experienced “in the box.”

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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 attend a conference you meet many people, and some of them you exchange contact information so you can connect after the conference to discuss things.

So how soon after the conference ends should you reach out to these folks?

If you reach out too early, they may still be traveling home and your message may get lost in the craziness of their travel, etc.

If you wait too long to reach out, they may have forgotten you and why you wanted to connect with them.

So what is the right amount of time?

How long do you usually wait to reach out?

Typically I email people 3-5 business days after the conference ends. This seems to work pretty well.

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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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Enjoying Podcast Movement…

And today I give my talk!:

Title:

Advanced Audio Production: Waaay Beyond Just Removing Umms, Etc.

Description:

Want to learn a bunch of expert tricks you can use to make your podcast sound professional? There are concrete reasons why some podcasts sound better than others. Learn what the pro’s already know.

You will learn:

• How to quickly train your guests before recording to ensure a clean recording
• How to use plugins, EQ and compression
• How to mix the host, guests and music so they sound great together
• Editing tricks
• The mastering step

And don’t forget:

Podcast Engineering School is offering a $350 discount for the upcoming semester starting Sep. 10th, 2019 using the promo code PM19

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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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Today me and lots of other folks are heading to Podcast Movement 2019 in Orlando, FL.

These days I don’t bring much audio gear to conferences. I used to, but I literally never used the gear I brought, so I stopped bringing it. I used to think, “Yeah, I’ll being a few microphones, a recorder, etc and I’ll do a bunch of interviews with other people at the conference.” But I NEVER feel like doing interviews when I’m there because I’m so busy chatting with so many people I haven’t seen in a while, and checking out companies’ booths, etc.

If you ever do bring gear on the road, be sure to pack it securely and be gentle with it.

Whenever possible I will pack a piece of gear inside its original box.

Also, I like to bring all my delicate electronic gear with me on the plane in my carry-on bag. I never want any of my gear to be thrown under the plane with all the other cargo, 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 2i2 from Focusrite has been one of the most popular interfaces for podcasters for a long time because of its high quality, simplicity and reliability.

Recently they released their 3rd generation of the 2i2.

I’ll be using it on an upcoming episode of my show.

In the meantime, check out a very good review of this interface by Bandrew Scott on his Podcastage channel.

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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 will probably be most familiar with the sound of whichever albums you have listened to the most over your entire life.

These can come in handy when you want to break in (and learn) a new pair of monitors, headphones or earbuds.

By listening to music that you know extremely well you will become familiar with the “color” of your new monitors. Because all monitors color the sound 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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This Facebook group is a good resource and support community for anyone that does podcast production, either for themselves or for clients or both.

Join today and say hello to the group’s fearless leader, the incomparable Steve Stewart!

Want to receive the Daily Goody in your email, daily or weekly? Subscribe free here.

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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Lots of podcasters use Auphonic as the final step in their episode production because it does so much, including:

• Level the different voices in the episode
• Reduce background noise and any hum
• Filter low frequencies
• Set the final LUFS level
• Generate the MP3 file
• Tag the MP3 file

You are allowed to process two hours of audio per month for free via their web interface, and their pricing is very economical if you need to process more audio than that.

You can also purchase their software and install it on your own machine and process as much audio as you want 😉

Also, you may want to check out my two interviews with Georg Holzmann, the founder of Auphonic:

• Georg Holzmann – PES 022
• Auphonic’s New Advanced Features, with Georg Holzmann – PES 108

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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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Have you ever listened to a podcast episode where there is literally no space between different participants speaking? Meaning, as soon as the host finishes asking a question, the guest IMMEDIATELY starts answering, leaving literally no space between the two. This sounds very unnatural, and personally I feel it’s quite annoying to listen to.

Please let the conversation breathe NATURALLY.

Another example of cutting natural pauses too tightly together is when a person is talking and there is literally no space left between sentences. Terrible. Their speaking is way too crammed together, and often doesn’t let the listener absorb what has been said due to the machine gun presentation of the speakers sentences.

How do you make sure your episodes aren’t edited too tight?

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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 attack time of a compressor is the amount of time it takes for the compressor to activate after the signal has gone above the threshold level.

Most compressors allow you to adjust the attack time from about 1 millisecond up to about 150 milliseconds. I frequently use attack times between 1 and 35 milliseconds.

When it comes to the attack times affect on the human voice, it’s a good way of regulating how much of the transient sounds poke through before the compressor squashes them. The beginning of hard consonants is a good example of this – T’s, K’s, B’s, P’s, etc.

Some audio will sound better with more transients remaining unaffected, and other audio with harsh transients will sound better if you squash more of them.

It all comes down to taste, and it also depends on the voice, the mic, other processing, etc.

For instance, if you’re processing a voice that was connected using Skype, sometimes it’s good to have a longer attack time because Skype limits/crushes the audio quite a lot which can sometimes cause dulled transients.

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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 best way to prevent problems like this is to do extensive sound checks before recording an actual session. And if you have several different physical setups, do this for each different setup.

1. Spend the time getting the physical setup right, the equipment connected properly, the signal flowing properly, the recording levels correct, etc.
2. Then actually record some test audio and listen back to it. Do this several times if necessary, tweaking your settings along the way.
3. Then write down all the details of your equipment setup as well as the settings on all your gear. Also, save all your software settings as a template so you can load that template later.

This way, whenever you’re about to record a session, you’ll be able to quickly set up your equipment and software and be confident that all your audio will be recorded properly.

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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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