It’s high time to survey the burgeoning Podcast scene, now that two of my three friends have started one, too.
The audio quality of many podcasts ranges from awful to barely listenable. Muffled, distant, or hyper compressed - some pods are hovering near AM-audio quality - a multitude of sonic sins are committed just to getting your voice heard on the interwebs.
I have consulted with hosts of nationally-distributed podcasts. A few of them have actually taken my suggestions, changed their setup, improved and fine-tuned podcast quality and delivery.
I am sharing a few of these suggestions:
1. Pay attention to your mic and the rest of the recording chain. Throw that plastic mic that came with your uncle’s Wollensack recorder back in the carton, and buy any of the excellent, reasonably-priced dynamics made for podcasting, like the Shure SM7b, or one of the entry-level Audio Technica or Neumann condensers (AT40330/TLM103). Even an EV RE20 will work for podcast work.
So why not use any old mic, you ask? Because lots of podcast listening is done while driving, jogging, biking, and other situations with a high level of ambient or background noise. So every bit of extra detail and added mid range resolution helps fight noisy environments and prevents listening fatigue.
2. Bypass your laptop's analog audio input with its low quality mic pre and A/D and hook up your new mic to one of the surprisingly cheap, high-res A/D pre amps, like the Universal Audio Volt, or Scarlett Solo and plug them directly into your computer’s digital input.
3. As you likely won’t have money to spend on good room acoustics, make it a habit to
keep your mouth within 5 inches from the mic. Covid-era Zoom and Skype interviews done via laptop have proven that there is
nothing more annoying than excessive amounts of room sound when podcasters speak several feet away from the computer's built-in mic.4. If you have a guest or two on the pod, make use of at least a slight stereo spread, panning the speakers to, say, 11:00, 12:00 and 1:00, which still sums nicely to mono. When listening with ear pods, spreading and separating the speaking voices in your headspace keeps them distinct and intelligible, especially when they have similar sounding voices, or when they speak over each other.
Here is a great example of when that is done intelligently:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/downloadsAnd if you cannot remove reverberant, ambient background sound from your dry vocals, check out Goyo (
https://goyo.app). It's a new AI plug-in, currently free for Beta testing. It miraculously eliminates reverberation and background noise from vocals.
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That should be a good start towards a more professional-sounding, impactful podcast, as long as the contents are equally exciting.
I invite others to add more tips.
