Tom Kelly – PES 149

I discuss podcast audio production in-depth with Tom Kelly – audio engineer, podcast producer and editor.

Tom Kelly – PES 149

My guest is Tom Kelly – audio engineer, podcast producer and editor at Clean Cut Audio. Check out his own shows – Reminiscent, Podcast Me Anything, and Podcarnage.

We discussed almost a million things, including:

  • Shure SM7b
  • Apogee Ensemble
  • Pro Tools 12
  • Double enders
  • AKG Perception 420
  • Macbook Pro (maxed out)
  • Waves WLM meter on Master Buss to determine LUFS level.
  • Noise Shaping 1, 2, or 3 dither – when downsampling from 24 bit to 16 bit.
    MP3 – 128kbps stereo,
  • Keyboard shortcuts
  • Kensington SlimBlade trackball
  • Strip silence, threshold of -29 db
  • RX6 voice de-noise
  • RX6 de-reverb
  • Waves de-esser
  • FabFilter Pro-Q 3
  • Waves Vocal Rider
  • Waves API 2500
  • All vocals sent to stereo aux
  • LinMB
  • Maxim (only catching clips/peaks, not actually doing any dynamic work)
  • Dither noise-shaping 3
  • WAV files: 16 bit / 44.1 kHz
  • MP3s: 128kbps stereo
  • Yamaha HS7s
  • ATH-M50 headphones
  • Squadcast
  • Klipsch earbuds

Thanks for being a great guest, Tom!

Comment below with any questions or comments.

.

DID YOU KNOW……..We exist for the purpose of helping you, so please comment below with any questions or remarks. We appreciate you listening.

Want to have a career in podcast production?

Browse our online courses on podcasting and audio production to become a qualified engineer.

2 Responses

  1. Chris,

    I’m halfway through this episode. A few comments:

    Regarding Pro Tools – it’s important to note this DAW/platform continues to maintain strong prominence in professional (New York/Hollywood) audio post. Conversely from what I hear it has become far *less* prominent in music production environments. Music centric (and highly affordable) DAWs such as Logic, Studio One, and yes – Reaper continue to gain popularity for various reasons.

    Pro Tools | First (as indicated by your guest) is a free, restricted version of the standard version, which is often referred to as Pro Tools “Vanilla.” It’s available for $30-$35 monthly, depending on how the subscriber opts to pay for it. This version includes robust capabilities for professional Podcast recording and post. The bundled plugins are excellent.

    Most professional post facilities use Pro Tools | Ultimate. The subscription model for this version runs $80-$85 per month, and again it’s based on how payments are arranged. There are additional accessibility options, such as (paid up front) yearly subscriptions. I believe perpetual licenses are still available as well, which may require additional fees for yearly update support.

    Avid certainly has some issues. OTOH Pro Tools is a highly capable DAW. And there are no hardware restrictions for common usage. iLok is a requirement.

    Regarding Dither, I’m going to paste a portion of an article that I wrote and posted on my site (I’ll refrain from supplying a link. I don’t want to be accused of click baiting anyone).

    Basically Dither is a Bit Depth reduction optimization option. E.g. when audio is down-converted form 24bit to 16bit, best case scenario is to replace the truncated bits with inaudible noise.

    Here’s what I wrote in my article:

    “Truncation is the removal of bits with no compensating replacement. The repositioning of samples after converting to a lower bit depth creates Quantization Errors resulting in audible artifacts and distortion. Dither is technology that adds minimal perceived noise to audio before word length reduction. This noise will mitigate (mask/remove) the audibility of distortion caused by Quantization Errors. The process preserves fidelity and Dynamic Range of audio throughout bit-depth conversion and/or bit-depth reduction exporting.

    There is a trade off: you are replacing bad noise with alternative “good” noise that is smoother, less audible, and much more consistent.

    Noise Shaping is a supplemental option that pushes noise into frequency ranges that are less audible to humans, thus allowing greater Dither with reduced perceptual noise.”

    I believe you run Ozone Advanced? If so it includes a highly capable Dither module.

    I hope this helps.

    -paul.
    @produceNewMedia

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Listen To Our Podcast

Discussing Professional Podcast Production - Recording, Mixing, Editing, Mastering. Hosted by Chris Curran - podcast producer, audio engineer, founder of Podcast Engineering School and Fractal Recording.

Subscribe on

Browse Content

Receive
Daily Goody's

wait a minute...

Next semester of the PES starts soon!

Days until next semester

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. More information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close