I’ve mixed and edited hundreds (or thousands, I lost count) podcast episodes and overtime I have noticed the same issues in those recordings that could have exponentially improved the sound by just spending, not money, but a few minutes of prep time to set everything up. Forget about expensive mic or outboard preamps and limiter, all you need is a handy recorder, the tips below, and a good story.
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You just said your thanks to your captivating guest, he said you’re welcome. It was an interesting interview. You pressed the stop button, the recording stops. After the guest leaves, you listened back to see if your questions are tight. You press play and first thing you hear is a loud hiss.
A recurring static noise in your recording is caused by one or more than one reasons that I will try to tackle in this article. Let’s start from the farthest possible source of noise until we reached the embedded waveforms on your screen
I recently was asked to quickly create a radio-themed show intro for a new podcast. As with anything that requires creativity, it's the planning and conceptualizing that took a lot of time. But once you managed to create an outline in your mind, it's all a matter of finding the right parts and stitching them together.
The radio noises was sourced out from the amazing people at Freesound.org. I got a very lengthy sample with a variety of noises. I took the ones that I like and spliced them in. The vocal processing was quite easy, just a low cut and high pass filter, add in some noise, and you got a very lo-fi radio sound. What I really like with this creation is the addition of a short outtake just before the actual intro. I found it in a very long recording of several takes for the show intro. So I guess it's actually quite a good thing to "roll the tape" early. Author's note: This article was originally posted at Medium.com, so if you have a Medium account you can read it there along with the comments and maybe follow me if you are interested in this kind of articles. Here's the link. So you managed to get the best sound out of your simple podcasting setup by preparing well for your recording session. So what now?
You fire up google and search for ‘how to edit and mix podcast’. What you get is a bunch of alien terms you have never heard before. Normalize, envelope automations, noise gate, transient designer. It can be overwhelming. I would have liked to tell you that those are just fancy words and everything is actually quite easy, but no, it takes some time and effort to learn mixing and audio engineering. I will however offer in this article the most accessible way for you to have a decent mix on your podcast episode. I wrote an article about the simplest workflow in achieving a studio quality mix and edit for your podcast. In it, I listed EQ and compression as the most important audio effects you need to learn. But I realized that a discussion on those two would require a wordcount that is equal to a moderate-length article so I decided to write this separately.
I am currently in the process of rebuilding my portfolio website. So yeah, there's really not much a lot here.
I have also decided to create a blog page where I plan to write topics related to my work doing audio and music (I already have a list of topics in my google keep). I also have a bunch of new music the I plan to post here. And some experimental music as well. If for some crazy reason you stumbled upon this page, welcome. Be sure to check some of my works on the portfolio page. You can go there by clicking "home" at the top. Thanks for reading! |
AuthorMy name is Drew. I'm an audio engineer by trade. This is my portfolio and blog site. I write audio articles here and at Medium. You can check out my portfolio over here. Archives
April 2019
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