Category: Daily Goody

It’s difficult to mix two podcast participants’ voices if one is wildly dynamic and the other is consistent and/or already compressed:

• The consistent and/or compressed voice will sound up front and intelligible the entire time; loud parts won’t be too loud and lower volume parts won’t be too low.
• The uncompressed voice will fluctuate wildly between way too loud and way too low volume. At times the audio will get super loud and blow the listeners ear drums out; at other times the audio will be drastically quiet (making it difficult for listeners to even hear) and mostly, if not completely, unintelligible.

Trying to match the overall volume level of those two differently dynamic voices (making both have equal perceived loudness levels) is a nightmare due to the inconsistency of the uncompressed wildly fluctuating voice.

The solution is (generally) to use the same amount of compression on each voice. After you do this, it’s actually quite easy to adjust all participants to be generally the same volume throughout the entire episode.

Of course this doesn’t solve EVERY mixing/balancing issue, but for podcast production it’s a GREAT practice to employ for the sole benefit of the listeners.

Have you ever thought of compression this way? 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.”

Also check out our YouTube videos HERE!

The BOOM is a new audio interface from Apogee.

Check out Bandrew’s exhaustive demo and review: Apogee Boom Interface Review / Explained

Here’s some info and specs of the unit:

• 2×2 USB Type-C Audio interface with Built-In Hardware DSP FX
• BOOM is made for passionate creators that pursue their creativity without compromise. Whether you’re a musician, podcaster, or live streamer, BOOM will inspire you to take your projects to the next level, with legendary studio-quality sound by Apogee.
• With BOOM, you can record, monitor, and mix through class-leading mic preamps and pristine digital conversion, fine-tune your input sources using BOOM’s built-in hardware DSP FX, and take your studio anywhere your story takes you. All you have to do is connect directly to your Mac, iPad Pro, or Windows laptop, and let your ideas flow.

What say you? Comment below.

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.”

I’m posting lots of videos these days discussing podcast audio production.

Watch the videos here:

• YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw1z9z8ikRabXA4zku88w5A
• Odysee — https://odysee.com/@PodcastEngineeringSchool:5
• Rumble — https://rumble.com/c/c-1329674

Most of the videos are like my Daily Goody blog posts — quick, simple, etc.

Please give me feedback — I’m hoping to improve 😉

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.”

By “haircut” I mean Limiting! *See the image above showing a nice straight “haircut”; the loudest peaks have been “tamed”.

Limiters basically chop off any loud sharp pointy peaks in audio, and they do so without causing clipping distortion (unless you’re doing extreme limiting).

Be careful: If a raw audio recording is extremely dynamic, the loudest parts are going to be severely loud and will almost certainly clip and distort when you boost the overall level in post. In these cases you should definitely use some compression before limiting.

Here are some helpful articles:

• Limiter vs. Compressor: One Way to Think About It
• If the “hair is WAY too long” on your audio (meaning it has lots of huge loud peaks), check out this post: If You’re Cutting Off Lots of Peaks in Mastering

Do you fancy yourself an “audio hairdresser”??! Comment below 🙂

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.”

I’m now making short daily videos and you can watch them on:

YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/c/PodcastEngineeringSchool/

Odysee — https://odysee.com/@PodcastEngineeringSchool:5

Rumble — https://rumble.com/c/c-1329674

*KEEP IN MIND that these videos are similar to my Daily Goody posts in that they are only a tiny little tip, fact or lesson everyday. Please don’t expect any of these videos to be long, earth-shattering deep-dive masterpieces that instantly answer every single question you can think of.

Consider subscribing to one of the channels listed above to make sure you see the videos.

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.”

TL;DR:

1. If a podcast participant is NOT wearing headphones or earbuds — you MUST use echo cancellation on their audio.
2. If a podcast participant IS wearing headphones or earbuds — you should NOT use echo cancellation on their audio.

Full explanation:

Echo cancellation is an audio process that can be used during podcast recording sessions. It was designed to eliminate feedback which jumbles the audio and makes conversation impossible. It’s meant to be used on participants who are not wearing headphones or earbuds — meaning, they’re listening to the other podcast participants through their computer speakers (or other speakers). Of course this projects the sound of the other participants into their room, which then bounces around their room and is picked up by their own microphone. This causes the other participants’ audio to be sent back to them, causing the effect of “feedback” for the other participants. The echo cancellation eliminates this feedback and makes conversation possible.

Echo cancellation is offered by most remote recording services like Riverside, Zencastr, Squadcast, Streamyard, etc.

Recap:

1. No headphones = use echo cancellation
2. Wearing headphones = don’t use echo cancellation

*But I hear some of you maniacs: “Excuse me, Chris, but can’t we just ALWAYS use echo cancellation just to be safe? What’s the harm?” ANSWER: Echo cancellation causes substantial-to-severe audio degradation, so I recommend only using it if it’s necessary 😉

What are your thoughts on using echo cancellation?

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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.”

For around $35.99 the Clarity Vx plugin from Waves seems to be a pretty awesome noise removal plugin. I haven’t tried it yet but the reviews are excellent.

Here’s a video of it completely removing the noise made by a blender!

In podcast production this would come in very handy for cleaning up the noisy audio of a remote guest who has a fan or air conditioner on in the background, or a noisy computer fan running, etc.

From their website:

• Clarity Vx is the highest-quality and the fastest way to clean your vocals from background noise and prepare them for any mix, production, podcast or video.
• Powered by the same Waves Neural Networks® engine as the larger Clarity Vx Pro, Clarity Vx is optimized with a simple interface to guarantee the best of both worlds with zero learning curve: impeccably clean vocals – no artifacts, no damage to the performance – AND results in seconds.
• In the past, cleaning noisy vocal recordings at the highest fidelity required serious engineering know-how, as well as the luxury of time. The solutions were not optimized for musicians on a budget, home producers on a schedule, and content creators who are not professional sound engineers.
• We’ve changed all of that with Clarity Vx.
• Whatever noise you’re dealing with – from light AC or computer fan noise, to heavy traffic outside your bedroom studio window, or anything in between – we have you covered with Clarity Vx. Simply turn the single knob clockwise – and hear the noise go away with the voice quality fully preserved.

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.”

Some remote guests love their AirPods so much, and simultaneously they know so little about audio quality, that they believe (wrongly) that the microphone in their AirPods is a great sounding option to use when they appear as a guest on podcasts.

It’s not.

That is all.

OK, but seriously, all podcast producers worth their salt always discourage the use of AirPods, except as a last resort when the guest literally has no other microphone options. Some producers even prefer built-in laptop microphones over AirPods!

NOTE: It’s totally fine to use AirPods to monitor audio when recording, but recording the AirPods microphone is never pretty.

What are your thoughts on the audio quality of AirPods?

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.”

I just came across these newly released VOLT interfaces from Universal Audio and they look very cool.

The smaller versions (which a podcaster would use) are priced pretty low, too, considering their quality ($139-$239), which I haven’t personally verified yet but everything UA makes has been exceptional quality.

From their website: We built Volt interfaces to let you easily record audio with legendary studio tone. Plug right into your Mac, PC, iPad, or iPhone and Volt just shows up — ready to capture your music, livestream, or podcast with professional sound.

NOTE: These interfaces are part of the UA ecosystem and you can actually get some free UA plugins when you purchase any VOLT interface.

If you get one of these please let me know how you like it!

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.”

iZotope just released their latest version of RX. RX 10 has several substantial updates from the previous version.

If you have RX 9 you’ll have to decide for yourself if you want top upgrade to 10. I did, but that’s partially because I have to stay on top of these things in order to teach them!

For a good explanation detailing all the new features and updates check out the short video at the top of the product page here!

FYI, students of PES get a 50% discount on iZotope RX and other iZotope products 😉

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.”