Category: Daily Goody

It’s common to ask hosts and guests to back up and restate part of their statement if they flub something. This makes it possible later to edit out the flub cleanly so no one ever knows that it even happened.

But something specific usually happens to people when they flub something – they laugh.

And then, to the horror of the podcast editor, they restate some of their previous statement WHILE THEY ARE STILL LAUGHING! And then continue talking while still laughing a bit.

This makes it almost impossible to edit because the result will sound really awkward; for instance after cutting out the flub, half of a sentence will be spoken clearly and calmly, and then the second half will be said while laughing. The listener will be confused because they have no idea what happened, and will say to themselves, “That’s weird. Why did that person start laughing mid-sentence?” Usually in those cases I don’t make the edit; I will leave the flub because that’s better than an awkward edit.

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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 recently bought a bunch of new plugins and I’ve started to experiment with them, including creating a new “base line” plugin chain which I will apply to each voice and then tweak, of course.

This is such a great learning experience: Starting from scratch and optimizing a new plugin chain. It gives me a chance to hear things from a fresh perspective and refine the sound quality.

This process also does wonders with regards to sharpening my ear.

So far the results are excellent. My clients voices sound better than ever! Though it does take a lot of time to experiment with the new plugins and dial things in… but I love the process! And the results!

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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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AirPods are not able to be recorded in Zencastr because their sample rate is, I believe, 16kHz, and Zencastr requires a sample rate between 44.1 kHz – 96 kHz.

Have you used another recording platform to successfully record a person using AirPods? (besides Skype)

FYI, I believe the sample rate of AirPods are 16 kHz, but I couldn’t find confirmation of this.

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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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Shotgun mics are extremely directional, meaning they pick up whatever you point them at, and they reject everything else to various degrees. The polar pattern is usually Supercardioid.

In podcasting, broadcasting and movie production, shotguns are mostly used for on-location recording when you want to capture a speaker and not pick up ambient noise as much. Alex Blumberg from Gimlet uses the Audio-Technica AT8035 shotgun mic when he does his on-location interviews.

Also, some voiceover artists prefer a shotgun mic – often the Sennheiser MKH 416.

Here are a few shotgun mics:

• Audio-Technica AT8035
• Rode NTG-2, Rode NTG4, NTG-3B
• Sennheiser MKH 416

And FYI, some people end up “pulling the trigger” and buying a shotgun mic. HAAAA – Oh come on, it’s funny! …..yeah, I know. [sigh] ….Carry on.

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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’re driving a car and you roll down your window, a low frequency will be produced due to the air flowing in, out and past your open window. Technically this is the Helmholtz Resonance, the same principle that makes a bottle hum when you blow over its open top.

Interesting: If you also roll down the passenger side window, the frequency will cut in half.

Can you hear the difference?

Drive safely!

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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 I spend time checking out how others are producing audio in terms of philosophy, techniques, tricks, new plugins, software, etc.

Specifically I like to watch the best engineers in the world discussing and teaching audio production.

And guess what – they are all focused on music production because there are no videos on serious podcast production. That’s why I’ll be starting to make those videos myself soon on YouTube!

Also, if you’re not subscribed to the Podcastage YouTube channel (gear reviews and tests to help you improve your podcast and YouTube audio/video), you may want to check it out.

FYI, Bandrew Scott of Podcastage was my guest on episode 77!

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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’s no better way to energize and accelerate the success of your podcast editing business, your podcast show, etc. than by attending good conferences that are relevant to your goals.

Conferences have played an immense role for me in the podcasting space.

Every year I attend:

• Podfest
• Podcast Movement – next one is in August 2019 and I’ll be the emcee of all the technical track presentations! Find me and say hi 🙂

I realize it costs quite a bit of money to attend due to flights, hotels, food, and your ticket, but if you’re serious about your endeavors in the podcasting space it is worth it.

Of course, NOT attending is an option as well. Maybe you’re happy with your current growth and trajectory, which is great!

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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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Written by Nick Messitte, iZotope Contributor on April 11, 2019. Here’s his full post.

While working on a podcast, I was given a transcript of the relevant audio, and a bunch of raw interviews from which to pull quotes. Many of the quotes were finished sentences—statements where the person had clearly finished their thought with a period, full stop, end-of-story cadence.

Or so it appeared in the written transcript. The audio, however, told a different story: the person had more to say, hastily jumping into their next thought. This “next thought” wasn’t germane to the original point at all—hence the cut in the script—but human beings aren’t tidy machines. They don’t speak in the same way as writers write. Run-on-sentences are par for the course.

This can sometimes be frustrating for audio editors, for if a person jumps too quickly between one thought and another, you’re left with a most unnatural edit point. That’s what happened on this podcast. I found myself with sentences that just didn’t end clearly.

The solution:

Dialogue Contour came to the rescue many times in this project. Using the module, I was able to close the sentence in a natural way. The operation was simple—I isolated the phrase, clicked in a node at the end of the phrase, and subtly brought the pitch down.

The result? A completed thought. This, combined with fading a bit of room tone underneath the subject as they ended their sentence, solved the problem.

Here’s his full post.

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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 back up all my production files locally on several redundant hard drives, and I also keep a backup of the past 6-12 months files in my Dropbox.

I believe I pay $100 each year for 1 Terabyte (TB) of storage. That’s 1,000 Gigabytes.

Around 6-12 months after an episode has been published I will remove those files from my Dropbox to make room for newer episode files.

I like having many backups – several locally and one in the cloud.

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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 mixer is definitely overkill for almost all podcast applications, but it’s newsworthy because SSL makes some of the best music production mixing consoles and gear in the world and now they have a small mixer for around $1,500.

And it’s worth every penny due to the highest-level quality of all the components – mic pre’s, EQ’s, stereo compressor, etc. It’s in an entirely different league than every small mixer you’ve ever seen or heard of.

It is 100% analog; it has no USB output, so you would need a separate audio interface as well.

So, essentially it was not made for podcasting scenarios, but it definitely could be used for podcasting and live-streaming.

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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 is usually not easy.

The classic example is the infinitely-overused “And umm…,” which is usually pronounced, “Andumm” and it actually sound more like “Ann dumb.”

Try separating those two words. Have you ever tried that?

Sometimes people actually pause a TINY bit after “and” and before the “umm,” and this makes it easy to remove the umm.

But in most cases the two words are slurred together pretty well. For these cases, sometimes this works (and sometimes not): 1. Remove the umm, leaving as much of the D in “and” as you can. 2. Use a very quick fade at the very end of the D in the word “and.”

Sometimes this will sound natural enough. If not, you really have no choice but to leave the umm in there.

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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 an episode transitions from loud intro music to the announcer guy, then to the host of the show, then to the guest, to the commercial, etc., it’s best if you make these transitions feel seamless and smooth, or in other words, a non-distracting fluid manner.

You don’t want any aspects of the audio production to jump out and distract the listeners.

Now, sometimes you WANT something to jump out and get the listeners attention, but regular simple transitions are usually not in that category.

In simple interview episodes transitions should be prompt but not rushed – maintain a good flow to maintain the energy of the episode.

In storytelling episodes anything goes. Sometimes you want there to be 10 seconds of soft music for a slow deliberate transition. Or something fading in very slowly, 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 sound coming out off the TV had only midrange and high frequencies. And you better believe I tried to find the settings to add the low end back in!

But why do some hotels purposefully remove the low frequencies from the TV speakers?

Because low frequencies travel through walls and could disturb people in neighboring rooms.

Some of the midrange frequencies can travel through the wall too, but most of them get absorbed by the walls, unlike the low frequencies which pretty much go right through walls sustaining only a bit of attenuation.

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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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…start or restart your computer.

Verify that the correct input and output devices are chosen.

Many of us have been burned by recording a session or episode and the WRONG microphone was being recorded. You may be speaking into an ATR2100 mic but your laptop mic was the mic being recorded, and when you find this out later you will be angry with how crappy it sounds.

Every time I restart my Mac, which is basically before and after every recording session, I check the input and output device settings, which for me the input device is my MixPre-6 and my output (virtual) device is Sonarworks Systemwide (which flattens the EQ on my studio monitors and headphones).

Checking your input device and output device settings is kinda like looking both ways before crossing the street. It’s best to do it every 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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The moral of the story: Record good sounding audio. Period.

Recently I saw someone complain that Auphonic isn’t cleaning up their tracks well enough. It turns out his tracks were recorded at an extremely low level which means that the resolution of the recording and the signal to noise ratio were terrible. In addition, there was a lot of background noise and erroneous noises as well.

Reality check: If you take your bad sounding audio and feed it into ANY processor, you can’t expect it to magically fix all your mistakes and spit out a diamond.

If you aren’t able to record decent audio, THAT is the problem you need to fix first.

Decent audio means: High signal to noise ratio, which means the voice is loud and all background noise is very faint or non-existent. Record in quiet environments and get very close to the microphone when speaking. Use good mic technique. Don’t make lots of erroneous distracting noises – BE QUIET when you’re not speaking.

I understand that all this can be difficult for non-engineers. And with regards to to dealing with crappy audio from guests, it’s not easy for anyone, including me. But please, before you blame the tools or your consultant, please make sure you record your audio 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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Take a leisurely walk today and be aware of every sound you hear.

Don’t strain yourself – just relax and observe.

Plenty of sounds will be in the foreground – loud and easily heard. In addition to appreciating those, allow yourself to perceive sounds that are lower in volume and deep in the background of the soundscape you’re in.

There are levels to sound.

Explore them today.

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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 earbud microphones can sound OK but most don’t sound that good. If a guest doesn’t have a real microphone, then we have to accept their earbuds as the best option.

But we CAN coach them so that they don’t make one of the cardinal mistakes with earbuds – letting the microphone flap around and rub against their shirt, their hair, etc.

Why is it vital to avoid this mistake? Because removing that annoying rubbing sound in post-production is nearly impossible, though the De-rustle module in RX 7 usually can help quite a bit.

During soundcheck I always ask the guest to hold the wire with the mic on it about 4-6 inches away from their body. And I ask them to hold that wire in front of them for the entire interview! Of course some people let go midway through and the mic starts flapping around (and that nasty rubbing noise starts) and so we have to stop the interview to remind them to hold the wire.

Note: This rubbing sound doesn’t happen with all people or all earbuds. I’ve recorded lots of folks who don’t hold the wire and there is no rubbing noise.

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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 recently downloaded the 30-day trial of the Diamond Color EQ 2 plugin and had some fun messing around with it. I’m not sure if I’ll purchase it, but I am loving how it sounds.

It’s an EQ that can add saturation as well.

I tried it on one of my client’s voices and the saturation really brings her voice closer / more up front / perceptually louder.

And the EQ is super smooth and pleasing to the ear. It adds so much clarity and fullness.

I’m going to experiment with it for the rest of the trial period and then decide if I want to buy it. (It costs 150 EURO)

Maybe I’ll try it on a vocal subgroup next…

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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 hear:

• A 10 minute audio piece I created called “Audio Adjectives and What They Sound Like.” Hear what these sound like: Big, Small, Boomy, Muddy, Boxy, Hollow, Midrangy, Biting, Presence, Clarity, Brightness, “Air,” and that telephone sound.
• 19 previous guests and friends roasting and/or congratulating me!

Treat yourself to episode 100 of my show, The Podcast Engineering Show.

Enjoy!

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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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