Category: Daily Goody

And no, I don’t mean checking your bank balance, hehe – I mean checking the balance of the mix of the various voices and music in the podcast episode that you’re mixing.

Listening at low volumes is a great way to hear the relative levels in your mix. Part of the reason is because at low volumes, the combination of the speakers and your ears tend to emphasize the midrange frequencies, or more accurately stated, the combination of the speakers and your ears tend to not represent the high and low frequencies as well as the midrange.

I usually do this near the end of my mixing process: After I process and balance all the elements of the mix at a normal volume listening level, I’ll turn down the volume to almost nothing and listen carefully for a short time. If one voice is substantially louder than another at this volume, then I’ll adjust its volume slightly and then check the mix again at regular listening volume. Same for the level of the music.

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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 use Zencastr very often, but I almost never turn on the “Echo Cancellation” feature.

If a guest has headphones or earbuds, then there’s no need to use the Echo Cancellation feature.

If a guest does not have headphones or earbuds (ugh!) and is going to be listening through their computer speakers, this is the time to turn on the echo cancellation. And then Zencastr behaves just like Skype with regards to ducking one person when the other person starts to talk over them, etc. That ducking thing is possible the most painful thing for me to hear on podcasts. But I guess some people don’t notice or care. Whatevv

Anyhow, I recently did a session where I turned on the echo cancellation for the first time in a long time, and it worked really well. The person was able to listen through their speakers and there was no feedback.

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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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Recently I was invited to be a guest on a podcast show, and the host provided his Calendly booking link so I could choose a convenient day and time for our recording session.

For the interview we connected through Zoom, and before we started the interview we talked briefly about using Zoom for recording podcasts, and the host mentioned that he has linked his Calendly account to his Zoom account so that when a guest books a recording session using his Calendly link, a new Zoom recording session is automatically created and the link to join that particular Zoom session is automatically included in the details fo the Calendly calendar invitation!

I thought this was very neat, and it’s really helpful to this host because he does like 12-15 interviews EVERY WEEK! And for him to book all those sessions manually and share all the links manually would be a lot of work.

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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 helpful when mixing to listen to your mix on lots of different speakers to get a feel for how your mix translates to end listeners who will each be listening on various devices, speakers, etc.

The MixChecker Pro plugin allows you to instantly hear what your mix sounds like on all these different speakers:

• Headphones
• Car stereo
• Boombox
• With background noise
• Earbuds
• TV speakers
• Transistor radio
• Smartphone
• In mono
• And more

I haven’t bought this plugin yet but I’ve heard good things about 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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(comment with your answer)

If someone is going to record audio in a room that has an air conditioner running and creating background noise, which of these techniques will minimize the air conditioning sound the most compared to the level of the voice?

1. Angle the mic away from your mouth a bit
2. Use two pop filters / windscreens
3. Speak in a soft voice for the entire interview
4. Get really close to the mic when speaking (like 1″ away, and be sure to use a windscreen to reduce plosives when you get this close)
5. Make other small noises to drown out the air conditioner noises
6. Stay the same distance from the microphone the whole time

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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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One scenario that will stress you out A LOT is when you have to rush to setup your equipment because you have to call your guest on Skype in 1 minute!

Good advice: Start setting up for your recording sessions well in advance of the session start time. Give yourself time to gracefully and deliberately turn everything on, set up your computer programs, adjust hardware, verify that you see levels, etc.

And if you’re all set up and still have 5-10 minutes before your session starts, you can relax, use the bathroom, and reflect a bit on the content of the conversation.

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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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Used by many podcasters including Dave Jackson, John Bukenas, and many more, the Electro-Voice RE320 is an outstanding microphone.

It’s a cardioid broadcast microphone with a higher-than-average output level so it won’t tax mic preamps as much as something like the Shure SM7b would.

It normally costs around $300.

This mic has a LOT of clarity, and less fullness/body than the more popular RE20, which works well for some voices.

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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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(fyi, formal definition below)

Generally in podcast production you don’t have to worry about phase issues because phase cancellation mostly happens when two microphones are picking up the same source from different distances. Usually the only times this usually during podcast recording is if there are several people, each with their own microphone in the same room – however if each participant speaks very close to their microphone there won’t be any noticeable phase issues.

As defined in Sweetwater’s comprehensive glossary of audio terms:

Audio waveforms are cyclical; that is, they proceed through regular cycles or repetitions. Phase is defined as how far along its cycle a given waveform is. The measurement of phase is given in degrees, with 360 degrees being one complete cycle. One concern with phase becomes apparent when mixing together two waveforms. If these waveform are “out of phase”, or delayed with respect to one another, there will be some cancellation in the resulting audio. This often produces what is described as a “hollow” sound. How much cancellation, and which frequencies it occurs at depends on the waveforms involved, and how far out of phase they are (two identical waveforms, 180 degrees out of phase, will cancel completely).

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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 remember back in audio school when the teacher encouraged us to be creative with regards to recording unconventional audio to include in the production of a song.

We were divided into small teams and I swear, every single team, on their own, came up with the idea of including an actual toilet flush in their song.

Every single team had run a mic cable into the bathroom and pointed a mic at the toilet to record that sound.

Good times 🙂

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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’d love to have more podcast editing clients you have to be careful with regards to your communication with potential clients.

Now that podcast editing has become an in-demand business service, there are many folks out there offering their editing services, and you need to handle yourself properly in order to land good clients.

Few thoughts:

1. Make your expertise known. Briefly. If you do have rare expertise (like graduating from PES!) make sure they know it. Briefly.

2. But don’t focus for very long on your expertise, focus instead on EXACTLY what they want, IN DETAIL. I’m reminded of Stephen Covey’s habit, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

3. And at all times you should NOT have a desperate attitude. Even if you feel you absolutely need this client, you need to have the attitude of, “I don’t need this business.” You never want to come across as desperate because that will lower their opinion of your services.

Do you have any questions regarding landing new podcasting clients?

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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 like using one of these in my mastering step to add a bit of smooth clarity to the high frequencies and some smooth warmth to the low end.

The keyword being smooth. That’s because exciters add pleasant harmonics instead of just boosting all frequencies like and EQ would.

I use the multiband exciter in iZotope Ozone 8 on my master buss.

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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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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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Can I get a “Yeah, Oh Yeah?!”

Thanks Barry.

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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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Ponder this great question from Carrie Caulfield Arick:

If you were editing someone well known, for instance a celebrity, what would your approach be to editing? The same as always? A lighter touch with filler and stammers? Something else?

Let her and I know your thoughts in the comments below 😉

Personally, I don’t do anything special for celebrities or high profile people.

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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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Often when a guest uses a headset (which are different than EARBUDS!), and because their mic is so close to their mouth and nose, there will often be loud breaths and/or some general “wind/air noises” on their track. I’m not sure that’s a great way to describe those sounds but I don’t know how else to put it.

They’re not terrible noises but I recently tried the RX 7 De-wind module on them and it worked pretty well, meaning it reduces those sounds a lot. Of course I had to be careful to not use too much of the module or else the sound in general gets destroyed.

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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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Cleanfeed is a VoIP recording device similar to but different than Zencastr, Squadcast, etc.

Cleanfeed can record each participant separately, however it does this differently than the others. The others record each participant locally to avoid any risk of internet glitching ruining their recording. Cleanfeed records everyone’s track on the hosts computer AFTER the all the guests’ audio has travelled over the internet. Cleanfeed claims their VoIP protocols are so good that glitching will not happen.

All in all it’s a very good and reliable service.

It’s free to try, so give it a try!

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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 Saturn plugin from FabFilter adds subtle, clean and warm tube or tape saturation as well as distortion.

Of course it’s extremely high quality because it’s made by FabFilter.

I’ve been using the Clean Tube saturation preset with the Drive set to 12%, which is fairly subtle, on lots of podcast voices I’ve been mixing.

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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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True or False:

If you adjust the level of two tracks (host and guest) so that their peak levels are the same, this will ensure that the two tracks will be the same perceived loudness when mixed together.

1. True
2. False

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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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Some podcasters and YouTubers constantly adjust the position of their microphone while recording. This isn’t a big deal as long as your boom arm is good quality and doesn’t make any sounds like squeaking, springs vibrating, etc., not to mention possible mic bumps and differences in tone.

Personally I never move my mic after I start recording, to avoid the issues stated above, because I have a Heil boom arm which is OK but sometimes squeaks, etc. And I’m also not recording myself on video, so I don’t need to “look cool” moving my mic around either.

The fact is that many people move their mic out of nervousness! Many times when recording on-location I have to tell the guest to not touch or move the mic. Ever. Please. Or else most would just start moving it, adjusting it, etc. For many people, when they start moving their mic it becomes like an addiction, then they have to constantly adjust and move it around, which leads to mic bumps, differences in tone, etc.

Lots of etc. in this post.

Maybe you have an opinion on this topic?

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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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