Category: The Podcast Engineering Show

My guest is Simon Barber – cohost and producer of Sodajerker on Songwriting, as well as musician, songwriter, academic and researcher.

We discussed:

• Recording interviews on location, as well as the necessary post-production
• Apogee Duet audio interface
• ESI Record M.
• Multitrack Auphonic
• Amadeus Pro
• Audio Hijack
• Rode NT USB microphone (cardioid condenser w/ pop shield)
• Zoom H6
• Shure SM 58’s
• iZotope RX 6
• Shure SM 57 with the A81WS windshield (as mentioned in our previous session with Allan Tépper)

Thanks for sharing so much great information, Simon!

Comment below with any questions or comments.

Note: This is not a standard TPES episode – this is me sharing lots of thoughts and ideas.

Here’s what I covered:

End of year purchases

• iMac Pro
• MixPre6
• Pistol grip for my AT8035 shotgun mic
• Ralph M. Rivera purchased Bose QuietComfort 35 II headphones – bluetooth sounds great – very comfortable and light – can use them to talk on the phone too – $350

Configuration of the iMac Pro

• 3.0GHz 10-core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.5GHz
• 64GB 2666MHz DDR4 ECC memory
• 2TB SSD
• Radeon Pro Vega 56 with 8GB of HBM2 memory

My plans for the iMacPro

• Have one production space instead of a recording table and a mixing desk.
• Live streaming with video and several participants.
• Green screen.
• Webinars and screen captures.
• Move all plugins from current production computer to the new one.
• Sennheiser MKH416 would be nice.

2017 Reflections

• First 2 semesters of PES went extremely well.
• PM17 was good but working a booth made it a blur.
• As always, some clients came and went.

2018 Plans

• Podcast Movement – not sure if I’ll be doing the Microphone Test-Drive Booth again.
• Four Podcast Engineering School semesters starting Jan.9, Apr. 3, Jun. 26 and Sep. 18
• Podfudge!

My upcoming PechaKucha talk at Podfest

• Title: EQ – What You Need to Know about Equalization
• Description: Learn the fundamentals of why, what and how to use EQ. Hear examples of good and bad audio.
• Audio examples: Too much low end, too much high end harshness, harsh esses, phone sound, road noise with uncompressed voice getting lost in it at times, too much reverb, huge dynamic range raw and then compressed

How I processed Hardcore History episodes for my road trip

• Why? Prius is a light car with more than average road noise.
• Batching in RX 6 and Sound Forge Pro
• Saved to mono first (to half the processing time for all subsequent steps), then leveling and loudness. – created awful sounding MP3’s.
• Should have done everything in RX 6 first, exported as a WAV, then opened in Sound Forge Pro and saved as a mono MP3.

Podcasters’ Society: A truly awesome community

Experience with the Pause Your Life podcast

• Producer always worked in mono only and converted all music to mono.
• Suggestion: You should always leave stereo music stereo because it doesn’t hurt anything and you can always render to mono.
• Fixing a harshly EQ’d voice – Fabfilter MB multiband compressor in the 3-10k range

Thanks for listening!

Comment below with any questions or comments.

This is the first ever mostly non-technical session of this show because we cover many important topics for podcasters and podcast producers including productivity, time management, experimenting with new gear, as well as business aspects.

My returning guest is Dave Jackson, podcast coach, owner of School of Podcasting, and host of many shows including Podcast Rodeo Show. Also, here’s the link to Dave’s first appearance (session #11) where we discuss his equipment and workflow, etc.

Some of what we discussed:

• What time of day/night we get the most work done
• Multitasking while working on audio
• Getting work done vs experimenting with new gear/stuff
• Family considerations
• Working ON your business vs producing the actual audio
• The latest you’ve ever stayed up producing an episode
• What do you drink during recordings?
• Organizing folders, backups, Dropbox, Backblaze, restarting your machine
• Line levelers and surge protectors
• Dave’s video setup
• Update on my Mac research and plans…

Thanks for so many insights, Dave!

Comment below with any questions or comments.

*This session was mixed and edited by PES graduate Christopher Whittaker! Great job Christopher!

My guest is Bandrew Scott – creator of Podcastage, a YouTube channel that provides gear reviews and tests to help you improve your podcast and YouTube audio/video. He also hosts The Bandrew Says Podcast.

This was a fun session; enjoy listening; we discussed:

• Arturia AudioFuse
• Mac mini
• Logic Pro X
• Final Cut Pro
• Zoom LiveTrak L-12
• Waves plugins
• iZotope RX 6
• Shure SM7B
• Mogami cables
• Cloudlifter CL-1
• dbx 286s

And check out Bandrew’s “tiny mic” video which we discussed in this session:

Thanks for being a great guest, Bandrew!

Comment below with any questions or comments.

My guest is Danny Ozment – audio engineer, editor, mixing and mastering engineer, podcaster and podcast producer. He is the owner of Emerald City Productions and the host of Recording A Capella.

Danny produces lots of podcasts and music projects. He and I went deep into lots of gear, software and workflow. Enjoy listening!

Hardware we discussed:

• Millennia TD-1 preamp
• UA Apollo interfaces (Twin and 16)
• PhantomFocus System monitors (with two 12″ subwoofers)
• Macbook Pro
• Shure SM7B

Software we discussed:

• Pro Tools
• iZotope RX 6
• HOFA-Plugins
• Fabfilter de-esser
• Pro Tools stock plugins
• Waves de-esser
• Wave Arts “Trackplug”

Danny’s mastering chain:

• Slate buss compressor
• Slate tape emulation
• Ozone multiband dynamics
• Waves L1 limiter

Other topics:

• Using two compressors in series and what setting to use on each
• Landr mastering website
• GIK Acoustics

Thank you Danny for so much valuable knowledge and information!

Comment below with any questions or comments.

My returning guest is Garth Humphreys, host and producer of Audio Pizza, Aussie Mac Zone and iBlindTech.

Garth and I go deep and get technical – and of course we make it practical and relevant to your podcast production, too 😉

Before Garth and I got rolling, I first explained how I recently rescued some bad sounding audio using various steps: Putting it through Auphonic first (noise reduction, low end filter, leveler), then processing the resulting Flac file in iZotope RX 6 (phase, de-reverb, and de-click), then more processing in Reaper including EQ’ing and de-essing.

Then we discussed:

• Garth’s new Yamaha HS7 6.5″ Powered Studio Monitors
• Compression: Going through all the parameters, what they mean and how they work.
• LUFS: Understanding how it’s calculated and what it’s measuring.
• FLAC file format: Benefits of using it for recording and archiving.
• Phase trick: A cool way to hear what a plugin is actually doing to your audio. It also works for checking impact of MP3 encoding.

Then I told the entire story of my recent purchase of the Rode Broadcaster microphone, and why I returned it quickly. (Note: It’s NOT because it’s a bad mic)

I also talked about the two Fabfilter plugins I bought recently: The Pro-DS (de-esser) and the Pro-MB (multiband compressor).

Thanks for hanging out with me again Garth and sharing so many tasty slices of audio pizza!

Comment below with any questions or comments.

My guest is Allan Tépper – Pro Audio/Video Specialist, Tech Journalist, Broadcaster, author and consultant.

We discussed:

• Audient iD14 audio interface
• Shure 545SD-LC Cardioid Dynamic microphone
• Shure A81WS Gray Large Foam Windscreen for SM81 and SM57
• Pyle-Pro PDMIC78 microphone
• Hindenburg Journalist Pro, and how it levels each clip automatically
• IK Multimedia iRig Pre HD
• Auphonic mobile app to record 48kHz .WAV files
• Zoom H5 for field recording
• Skype recorders
• MixPre-3 with perhaps the cleanest mic preamps
• Rode Broadcaster

Thanks for being a great guest, Allan!

Comment below with any questions or comments.

My guest is Mike Russell, Founder and Creative Director at Music Radio Creative where he produces podcast intros, radio jingles, commercials and more. He also hosts the Music Radio Creative podcast – audio episodes since 2012, and now also streaming Live daily to various platforms including YouTube and Facebook.

*Most importantly, check out Mike’s YouTube channel for tons of instructional videos.

A fraction of what we discussed:

• Microphones: TLM 103, AT 4033, Heil PR40
• dbx 286s channel strip
• Soundcraft Signiture 12 MTK mixer
• iMac 27″ (late 2015)
• Adobe Audition, including the remix tool, waveform view, spectral frequency display, spot healing tool
• Plugins: MeldaProduction MFreeFXBundle and Ring Modulator, Waves Meta Flanger and Tune Light
• iZotope Neutron and Vocal Synth
• OBS Studio

Thanks for sharing so much helpful information, Mike!

Comment below with any questions or comments.

My guest is Corey Coates – podcast producer, consultant, and Chief Expectations Manager at Podfly.

Corey has a ton of experience producing podcasts as well as internet radio, and on top of that he’s consulting with huge companies on their podcasting plans and strategies.

Here’s a partial list of what we discussed:

• In-the-box recording on a Mac
• Steinberg UR44 audio interface
• Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack, Loopback and Nicecast software
• Sound Devices MixPre-6
• Shure SM7B microphone
• Shure Beta 87A microphone
• dbx 286s channel strip
• Adobe Audition

Thanks for hanging out with us, Corey!

Comment below with any questions or comments.

My guest is Mike DelGaudio – voice actor, narrator for The NY Times, Atlas Obscura and Audible, and an absolute YouTube rockstar! Check out his Booth Junkie channel on YouTube.

We go deep into:

• Voiceover recording
• Whisper Room booths
• Sennheiser MKH 416 mic
• Neumann TLM 103 mic
• CAD E100S mic
• Roles headphone amp
• Audient iD22 audio interface
• Recording into Reaper on a Mac
• Sennheiser HD 380 Pro headphones
• Shure E215 in-ear monitors
• Apogee Duet interface
• Waves X-click plugin

Thanks for sharing soooo much knowledge, Mike!

Comment below with any questions or comments.

My guest is Paul Isaacs, Director of Product Management and Design at Sound Devices. We discussed the MixPre-6 in lots of detail, and also covered a lot of other audio topics.

In the right circumstances, the MixPre-6 could be a really valuable piece of gear for podcasters. It’s a high quality recorder, interface and mixer. The microphone preamps are super-high quality.

I was able to try the unit courtesy of Sound Devices, but you won’t hear that episode session for a couple weeks.

Thank you for being so helpful, Paul!

Comment below with any questions or comments.

My guest is Doug Kaye, audio engineer, self-proclaimed recovering veteran podcaster (hehe), and full-time amateur photographer. Doug was also one of the primary people responsible for the development of the popular software called Levelator as Executive Director of The Conversations Network.

We covered a lot including some awesome history of podcasting, digital audio and more, including mono vs joint stereo MP3’s, how much compression to use, what a compellor is (!), and ISDN lines.

Equipment he currently uses:

• Steinberg CI2 audio interface
• Heil PR40
• Mac computer
• and that’s it!

Thanks for a wonderful session, Doug!

My guest is VaShaun Jones, audiophile, host of The Delivering Access Podcast, and owner of Fedora Outlier, LLC. He’s been podcasting for 5 years and LOVES great audio gear.

Here’s a partial list of the gear that VaShaun owns and uses:

• Mictek CV3 microphone
• Aphex Master Channel Strip
• PreSonus StudioLive AR12 USB Mixer and Audio Interface
• iMac
• Yamaha HS5 monitors with subwoofer
• JBL 8″ monitors
• MXL CR89 microphone
• Shure Beta 58 wireless
• RE20 microphone
• Sennheiser ew 100 wireless system with Lavalier microphone
• Yamaha AG-06
• Garage Band
• PreSonus BlueTube (with 2 preamps)
• X-Touch control surface

Thanks for hanging with me and sharing so much, VaShaun!

My guest is Steve O’Neill, host and producer of Sharp (podcast).

We discussed SO much, including:

• Creative Commons and Freesound.org
• Rode Procaster
• Rode NT1 (for Voiceovers)
• Shure SM58
• AT 3350 lav
• dbx286 channel strip (little compression, gate, de-esser)
• Scarlett Focusrite 2i4
• Adobe Audition
• Zoom H5n
• Windows laptop
• PreSonus Eris E5 5″ Powered Studio Monitors
• Sennheiser 280 Pro
• Studio in the corner he built himself with a gobo around the side
• Noise gate
• Multiband compressor
• EQ
• Levelling to – 16 LUFS

*Also, here’s Steve’s post we mentioned titled Making an acoustic ‘gobo.’

Thanks for sharing so much, Steve!

My guest is Kyle P. Snyder, Lecturer at Ohio University School of Media Arts and Studies, freelance engineer and consultant for White Coat Audio, and Chair of education for the Audio Engineering Society (AES).

Kyle and I got deep into many audio engineering subjects that are key to producing podcasts. Enjoy listening to the full session.

We also talked about:

• “Painting a sonic portrait” – which is what Kyle teaches his students at Ohio University
• Sound Walks
• Fixing bad audio
• A Media in Medicine Podcast called Rotations

Partial list of his gear and software:

• TLM 103 mic
• Yamaha Nuage – digital desk
• Neve preamp
• Nuendo DAW (Steinberg)
• Sound Devices USBPre 2
• Neumann U87
• Grace preamps
• Auralex Microphone Isolation Shield for Vocals and Voiceover
• Lavalier mics
• DPA d:vice™ Digital Audio Interface

Btw, Kyle also hosts and produces the AES Journal Podcast.

Thanks for hangin’ with me and delivering the goods, Kyle!

My guest is Curtis Judd, creator of Light and Sound Media. Especially check out his YouTube channel where he publishes a new video every week covering lighting, sound, and camera gear to help folks produce better video and film.

Audio is a vital component of video and Curtis really takes his audio seriously.

We discussed:

• RE20
• Orion Studio audio interface (Antelope Audio)
• Focal Solo6 Be 6.5″ Powered Studio Monitors
• Adobe Audition
• ProTools
• Analog vs Digital limiters in recorders
• Using multiple passes with less noise reduction in iZotope RX 6
• iZotope Ozone 7
• iZotope Nectar
• Linear phase EQ

Listen to the full episode for all the goods 😉

Thank you for being a great guest, Curtis!

My guest is Steve Stewart, owner-operator at Steve Stewart Podcast Productions and creator of Podcast Editor’s Club (Facebook group). Steve also offers an Audacity workshop.

We talked a lot about editing including advanced techniques like using very short fades to make edits feel natural, finding zero crossings, off-mic noise, keyboard shortcuts, breathing, joining half words, random noises, etc.

*Note: Here’s the link I mentioned to an older episode of Social Media Unscrambled where I initially forgot to press record and so we had to restart the episode, which was sooooo awkward. Listen to that craziness HERE.

Here’s a partial list of Steve’s equipment and software:

• ATR2100-USB mic
• Audacity
• Backup recorder
• Ecamm call recorder
• Levelator
• iZotope RX 6 (de-breath, de-mouthclick, etc.)

Thanks for sharing so much valuable info with us, Steve!

My guest is Michael Pettersen, Director of Corporate History at Shure Inc., and btw over the years he’s held many other positions at Shure.

We discussed microphones in great depth from every angle, I think. 

Listen to the full episode for all the amazing stories Michael told 😉

Thanks for being a wonderful guest, Michael!