Mary and Blake Larsen – PES 001

I had a fun chat with Mary and Blake Larsen, hosts of ParentCast, The Living Reminders, and OutlanderCast. Mary is also a musician and Blake also makes donuts. They are delightful people; maybe you want to reach out to them and say hello.

Mary has an ear for details. Her previous experience as a TV show host gave her a deep insight into presentation, sound and listener experience. Now she uses those skills to craft great podcasts.

Blake is the audio engineer in the relationship. He built a custom studio in their basement. Over time they have have upgraded their equipment little by little. They didn’t start with great gear.

These days they use Heil microphones and an 8-channel Alesis mixer. They record in Garage Band and edit using Adobe Audition. Blake uses an iPad for playing sound clips while recording episodes.

They mainly use Skype for connecting with guests, and sometimes they use Skype to call their guests on the phone when they are only able to connect by phone.

For mixing and mastering in Audition, Blake started with one of the factory presets on his compressor but then he tweaked it to suit their taste.

Some challenges that Blake had were getting a good sound using EQ, and getting good mic levels while recording.

A couple tips:

When you’re adjusting your sound settings to establish good presets, (as well as to train your ears), it pays to listen to your recordings in various places on different speakers. Listen on your studio monitors, listen on your headphones, earbuds, in your car, on a Bluetooth speaker, etc. You will then have a much better idea what your sound REALLY sounds like to other people.

Record some dead air with all the mic’s on but no one speaking. This can come in handy later while editing when you need to put a little blank space in between an edit so it doesn’t sound like an edit. You just take a little dead air and insert it there and voila – it sounds natural.

What an awesome session. Thanks Mary and Blake!

Check out their shows: ParentCast, The Living Reminders, and OutlanderCast.