Generally Matching the Amount of Compression on Each Participant

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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