Top 3 Reasons Remote Podcast Guests Sound Bad, and How to Avoid All 3!

Remote podcast guests don’t know what they don’t know, so it’s our responsibility to soundcheck them and train them before starting the recording session to ensure we capture good audio from them. 

Here are 3 common occurrences which ruin remote guests’ audio quality: 

1. Noisy Background — Fans, air conditioners, noisy kids in the next room, dogs barking and running around, phones ringing, open windows letting in the sound of lawnmower or cars driving by, etc. SOLUTION: Work with the guest to turn off or eliminate all these noises before starting recording. 
2. Making Extraneous Noises — Moving their microphone around, slapping things down on their desk, rearranging their desk mid-interview, moving their chair around, clicking a pen, tapping their foot, slamming their drink on their desk, wiping the dust off their computer, etc. SOLUTION: Explain to them that they have to BE ABSOLUTELY QUIET because they are now in a recording studio and their microphone will pick up all extraneous noises and ruin the sound of the podcast. 
3. Bad Microphone Technique — Drastically changing their proximity to their microphone (which drastically changes their volume level), having nasty plosives due to not having a pop filter/windscreen combined with speaking directly into the microphone, using their earbuds microphone and having it flap around and rub against clothing, etc. SOLUTION: Ask them to stay the same distance from the microphone at all times, ask them to speak “past” the microphone if they don’t have a pop filter/windscreen, ask them to make sure their earbuds mic doesn’t flap around. 

BONUS NOTES: 

• If they’re using a bad sounding microphone (for instance like an old school headset from 1998) and that’s the only microphone they have, you’ll have to rely on post-production to fix it as best you can. 
• Make sure they have a solid Wifi connection; if not they should move closer to their router or modem. NOTE: Being hardwired with an ethernet cable is ALWAYS a million times better, but most guests won’t have that setup. 
• If their computer is acting weird and they haven’t restarted it since 2007, have them restart it 😉

There’s a lot more to know regarding handling guests and soundchecking them properly but these ideas are a great start. We spend more than an hour in Podcast Engineering School going over this and much more in great depth.

Question for you — do you have any pre-recording rituals you do every time? Comment below.

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