3 simple steps to Improve Podcast Audio Quality.
To improve your podcast audio quality take 3 simple steps.
1. Remove background noise and room echo and buy a dynamic mic specially designed for vocals, voice-overs, and podcasting. Recommended mics are, ShureSM58, SM7B, Rode PodcMic, PodMic USB, etc.
2. Invest in a professional audio interface with at least 65 dB of preamp gain, a jitter-free clock, and stable audio drivers. Examples include the Apogee Duet 3, UAD Apollo X, RME Babyface Pro, Antelope Zen Q Synergy Core, and Prism Sound Lyra 2.
3. Record in a high-quality WAV format locally on your computer, hire a professional audio engineer for editing and mastering or edit yourself and get a professional mastering template.
A Comprehensive Guide to Improve Podcast Audio Quality
Professional Audio Quality is a common factor among successful and famous podcast shows.
I often get asked, “Can you make my podcast sound professional?” And I reply, No! I cannot, unless you provide me with professional raw recordings.
There is a misconception that post-production can make any audio sound professional. So, most beginner podcast producers do not invest in a recording room and equipment.
it’s everything—the recording room, the equipment, the voice, the content, and the post-production. Only by focusing on every aspect, “we make it sound professional”
- Local Recordings
- Fix Noise & Echo
- Keep Warm Water, Coffee, or Tea nearby
- Invest in Equipment
- Invest in Room
- Monitor Your Audio
- Create a Check List
1. Local Recordings
The most common issue with podcast audio quality is internet dropouts, which cannot be fixed in post-processing. To prevent this, record each speaker on their device locally.
Utilize Audacity, Reaper, GarageBand, or any other free Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) software. You can use an additional laptop, cell phone, or tab, with this, your online call does not affect the recordings on both sides.
Additionally, employ webcam tools to record videos locally on each participant’s device.
Connect through a Phone or a Tab and Use a Laptop to record locally!
2. Fix Noise & Echo
The best practice for improving the podcast audio quality is to address noise and echo issues before recording. This involves closing doors and windows, turning off noisy electronics like cell phones, and computers, and ensuring a quiet environment.
To minimize echo, select a room furnished with sofas, curtains, cushions, and other materials that absorb and diffuse sound. Additionally, avoid having pets nearby as they can introduce unnecessary noise and distractions.
Remove noise from the room, even if it’s a minuscule amount!
i. Wear Soft Clothes
Wear soft clothing that doesn’t produce any noise when moving. Remove any jackets, sweaters, or shirts that create noise when in motion. Microphones designed for speech recordings are highly sensitive to certain sounds. They can amplify seemingly insignificant sounds into quite annoying and disruptive noises.
The best way to remove noise is to avoid it!
ii. Remove noisy jewelry.
I’ve edited some podcast shows where the guest had some jewelry on her that kept producing annoying sounds throughout. I empathize with the podcast production company.
Such sounds can be distracting and bothersome. Politely asking guests, or even yourself, to remove such jewelry will save time, effort, and energy and most importantly, preserve the quality of your podcast audio.
3. Keep Warm Water, Coffee, or Tea nearby
Your throat can get dry and itchy while speaking and monitoring your voice through headphones. To record energetic and vibrant audio, it’s essential to maintain optimal energy levels and clean throats for all the participants of the podcast show. Have some warm water, coffee, or tea readily available during podcast recording sessions.
Taking periodic sips will prevent coughing, throat dryness, and discomfort. This practice keeps your throat refreshed, and active and helps maintain optimal energy levels throughout the recording session. These simple factors make everyone comfortable and improve the vibes and overall recording quality.
4. Invest in Equipment
Invest in Microphones
Investing in XLR dynamic microphones such as the Shure SM58 and SM7B ensures high-quality raw audio materials for your podcast recordings. So the simple answer for how to improve podcast audio quality is
Get a podcast mic like Shure SM7B.
Quality raw files are foundational for improving audio quality. the only way to elevate podcast audio is to invest in professional dynamic and podcast mics. Dynamic microphones have also proven to be the optimal solution for recording multiple speakers in the same room.
Invest in Mic Stands, Pop Filters & Shock Mounts
Equipping your microphone setup with a professional mic stand is essential to achieve optimal mic positioning, enabling the capture of the finest details in your voice.
Additionally, for those utilizing condenser microphones, acquiring a spider-mount and a pop filter is crucial to mitigate low rumbles, and loud and distracting hisses and pops, thereby preserving the resolution of your podcast audio.
Shure SM58 a Beginners Choice
The Shure SM58 is an industry-standard microphone renowned for its exceptional performance with vocals, an excellent choice for beginner podcast producers. Equipped with a built-in transformer, this microphone subtly introduces harmonic distortion, offering a professional finishing touch to the sound captured directly from the microphone
With its round, warm, and smooth sound, the Shure SM58 ensures a professional-grade audio experience.
Key features of Shure SM58
- Less gain hungry as compared to Shure SM7B
- Works fine with entry-level audio interfaces like M-Audio, Focusrite Solo, etc
- Comes with a built-in transformer.
SHURE SM7B A Professional Choice
The Shure SM7B is an industry standard for podcast recording, boasting a full-spectrum frequency response akin to a condenser microphone. Distinguished by its ability to reject background noise and echoes, it offers superior podcast audio quality in untreated rooms compared to USB or XLR condenser mics.
Key features of Shure SM7B
- 50-20Khz frequency response with 3 different modes Flat Mode, Bass Roll Off, Presense Boost.
- It requires +60dB of clean gain and only works with professional audio interfaces like UAD, Apogee, RME, etc.
- No built-in transformer
Invest in a professional audio interface
Pairing your professional XLR microphone with an audio interface enables voice signal recording into a computer, and a high-quality, professional audio interface is foundational for elevating podcast audio quality.
So, the second simple answer for how to improve podcast audio quality is
Get a high-end professional Audio Interface Like UAD Apollo X6, Apogee Ensemble, RME UCX II, Prism Lyra, etc, and pair it with sure SM7B
Professional audio interfaces come with clean preamps, jitter-free clocks, and state-of-the-art AD-DA converters. Packed into a single unit, these features enhance your podcast recordings with a smooth, warm, pleasant, and clean sound quality.
Top choices for professional-grade audio interfaces include the Apogee Duet, Ensemble, Symphony, UAD Twin X, Apollo Series, RME Baby Face, UFX series, Antelope Orion Studio Synergy Core, Prism Audio, Lynx, and Steinberg AXR Series.
Among them, Lynx and Prism Audio interfaces stand out as top-of-the-line options, renowned for their exceptional studio-quality performance.
5. Invest in Room
Now that you’ve invested in top-notch equipment, optimize its performance by ensuring your recording environment is free from echo, noise, and standing waves. This ensures exceptionally crisp & clean and professional sound quality.
To minimize noise, effectively seal any holes, window gaps, and door gaps to block outside sounds like traffic, birds, and ambient noises from interfering with the recording process.
Utilize a combination of thick panels made of plaster and polyester, and fill any gaps with cement. Implementing this in layers is cost-effective and allows for easy repair or removal when necessary.
To diminish echo, strategically install acoustic foam panels in room corners and along walls, complemented by diffusers to scatter sound waves. The objective is to create a natural-sounding environment devoid of excessive echo and standing waves.
Standing waves can distort sound quality by canceling specific frequencies in a room, resulting in a muddy or boxy sound lacking detail in speech recordings. Prioritize the removal of echo, noise, and standing waves in the following order:
- Remove Noise
- Remove Echo
- Remove Standing Waves
Most audio and podcast producers learn the hard way
it all comes down to the room’s sound. If it sounds great the investment in the professional podcast mics and audio interface will pay off. “
6. Monitor Your Audio
Monitor yourself and others to ensure the audio signal is clean and free of distortions or dropouts. Verify that all XLR cables are securely plugged and microphones functioning properly.
Double-checking the signal chain guarantees that each participant is recorded smoothly throughout the episode.
Monitoring your voice while speaking provides valuable feedback on your tone, volume, and preamp gain adjustments, ensuring a comfortable listening experience for your audience and yourself.
7. Check List
Have this checklist posted on your PC or laptop screen, your work desk, or your podcast table to ensure that everything is in order:
- Set recording settings to 24-bit 48kHz Wave Audio File format.
- Ensure the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) and Audio Interface settings are aligned.
- Aim for a recording loudness of -18 to -23 dB RMS with -6 dB maximum peak levels.
- Mute all cell phones and disable vibration.
- Power off noisy electronics such as fans, loud computers, heaters, and refrigerators.
- Ensure no pets are present in the recording area.
- Remove any clothing or jewelry that could produce sounds.
- Position the microphone directly in front of the speaker’s mouth. Mentain 3-6 inches of distance for the condenser mics.
- Multi-track recording for multiple speakers
- Ensure everyone is seated comfortably and has their coffee, tea, or drinks within reach.
1. Monitoring
Listening to your voice through headphones while recording helps ensure that the recording levels are appropriate and that there is no white noise, hiss, or background noise being recorded. Additionally, it helps with adjusting the tone while speaking.
2. Microphone Distance
Keeping a distance of 3-6 inches ensures the microphone isn’t overloaded and prevents potential, extra boomy low end, plosives, distortion, loud sibilances, and clipping.
3. Microphone Angle
Most microphones are designed to produce flat frequency response only when speaking straight into them. Changing the angle or tilting the microphone can alter the tone and sometimes avoid plosives.
For this purpose, A 45-degree angle works fine.
For an alternative tone, It’s best to experiment with mic positions.
3. Speak with Clarity
To sound professional on the other end of the microphone, speak with clear pronunciation, and ensure that each word is articulated appropriately.
5. Things To Avoid
It’s quite interesting how unintentionally we create a lot of different noises while having a conversation, for example, eating, drinking, tapping on the table, playing with a pen, paper, or book, moving things around, etc. It’s quite natural and it does not disturb our communication. Our brain registers it as a natural ambiance.
However, in audio recordings, it is registered as distracting and disturbing noise that affects speech intelligibility. It can create harsh and brittle sounds that increase the post-production workload and degrade the listener’s experience if not removed.
6. Take Breaks
Hitting the pause button to stop the recording process is normal. Feel free to take breaks if you feel like it. It’s ok to forget the question or the script. When ready, you can resume the recordings it does not affect the final audio.
All the files can be stitched together in the post-production process and the listeners would not even know how many breaks you took recording the show.
1. Hire Professional Post-Production Services
Editing and preparing a podcast recording for publication is a tedious task. It takes time to learn and get good at it. Therefore, It’s best to hire a professional audio engineer, or podcast editor and focus only on the script, interview, and recording part.
It requires much time, patience, and energy.
Devote all your energy to content strategy, writing, and interviewing. Enhance your creative materials and focus on improving what you can do only.
Being conscious of the editing process is not good for the host’s performance. It can cause stress, and preoccupation and deteriorate the overall vibes.
If, for budget reasons, you want to handle post-production yourself, complete the episode recordings first, ensuring professional-quality raw materials with optimal performance. Then, take a break before beginning the editing and post-production process.
2. Preparation for Editing
I) Backup
Create copies of your podcast recording for a backup. While rendering or exporting, don’t add any effects, gain reduction, or normalization to the audio files inside the project or in the rendering settings.
II) Gain Staging
Before starting the editing process, review the whole audio file for overall loudness consistency and adjust the gain with a VU meter to ensure flawless editing and mastering.
Make sure that the audio is not too loud or too quiet. The ideal loudness should be around -23dBRMS or 0dBVU.
Instead of increasing the volume fader, utilize the gain function to increase or decrease the loudness.
Segment the audio into distinct sections based on louder and quieter parts, then adjust their gain accordingly.
3. Editing
1. Remove Silence & Breath
Professional podcast shows contain no distractions like breaths, background hiss, ambient noise, etc. You can achieve this level of detailed editing for your podcast show with the combined manual and automated editing tools inside your Digital Audio Work Station (DAW).
Begin by removing dead parts, silence, breaths, and particularly loud breaths with automatic tools. Steinberg Cubase 12 Pro offers an automatic audio processing tool for removing audio parts below a certain loudness threshold.
This provides control to adjust and set the threshold for detecting the noise floor, silence, and breath sounds.
It’s not perfect, sometimes it removes ending parts of a sentence like t of the word “part” which can be unedited manually when looking for narration errors, stutters, repeated words, interruptions, etc.
2. Remove Stutters, Repeats, Errors, etc.
After removing breaths and silence, listen to the whole recording to remove mouth noise, stutters, repeats, interruptions, narration errors, and long weird pauses, manually adjust the gain of loud laughs and spoken words while keeping it natural conversation or speech.
The rule of thumb is that editing remains seamless to the audience. The editor’s job is to stay invisible!
This part of the editing process is tiring and tedious. Becoming swift at it requires a lot of practice and consistent effort. So, take regular breaks to give your eyes proper rest.
3. Restoration
After removing breaths, mouth noise, stutters, narration errors, and interruptions the next step is removing or reducing ambient noise while keeping the voice intact. For this, you need a professional noise removal plugin like Izotope RX.
A plugin like Izotope RX operates with a noise profile. To create one, playback a looped audio containing only ambient noise and press the learn button to record the noise profile. Now it’s ready to suppress similar noise throughout the audio file.
Recording an ambient noise profile is a feature available in all professional noise removal plugins, regardless of the brand or make of the plugin. After learning the ambient noise profile of the audio file it can take care of the rest and clean the audio file.
Be careful while removing the noise; overdoing it can affect the speech clarity and overall audio resolution.
4. AI Restoration
I don’t typically recommend relying solely on AI for editing and post-production. However, in cases where the audio contains extreme echo or background noise, and re-recording the episode isn’t feasible, you might consider using Adobe AI to restore the audio file. Be cautious of potential issues such as ghost words and strange tone changes that may arise from AI processing.
4. Mastering
Mastering is a simple process. It consists of 7 simple steps. Each step makes a subtle change and their accumulative effect makes the edited podcast audio ready for broadcasting. Here is a typical plugin order for podcast mastering.
- Gain
- LUFS Meter
- EQ
- Desser
- Compressor
- Saturator
- Limiter
- Dither
- LUFS Meter
1. Gain
After removing noise and all unnecessary sounds, the first step in mastering is increasing the loudness to -24LUFS with -3dB peak levels. Use any simple gain plugin or a professional analog gear like tube Eq or a tube compressor.
Usually, it would require 3-4 dB of gain.
To ensure peak levels do not exceed -3dB, insert a brick-wall limiter with a -3dB output level in the third-to-last plugin slot.
Using LUFS meters, monitor the input and output loudness at -24 LUFS for each stage of the mastering process. To adjust, use the output gain on the EQ and the make-up gain on the compressor.
2. EQ
Intro:-
This is the most delicate and crucial part of podcast mastering, requiring extensive ear training to execute correctly. The goal is to maintain the original resolution while enhancing the clarity and depth of the voice. A professional recording would require a minuscule amount of eq adjustment.
Tips:-
- Use linear phase dynamic EQ plugins, Cubase’s Frequency, FabFilter’s EQ3, IZotope Ozone EQ, etc.
- Use the LUFS meter to monitor and adjust EQ gain, ensuring that input and output levels remain at -24 LUFS.
- Start with Removing and do not remove more than -3dB as it can cause serious phase issues.
Let’s break it into simple steps and learn how professionals apply EQ to voice recordings, podcast shows, voice-overs, etc.
i) Low End
Use a 12 dB high-pass filter to remove frequencies around 80–90 Hz. Steeper filters, such as 24 dB, 48 dB, or 96 dB, may cause the high frequencies to sound harsh or unpleasant.
ii) Mid-Range
This is the most interesting aspect of applying EQ to voice recordings as it enhances intelligibility, resolution, and clarity by removing resonating frequencies. It’s important to note that we are not adding or boosting any frequencies; however, after removal, the recording may sound louder in the mid or high-end frequency range.
Find resonating frequencies from 200Hz to 550Hz, and boost with a high Q filter. To remove, reduce to -3dB by listening to the effect. Reducing more than -3dB is not a good practice as it can remove clarity and resolution. and create serious phase issues.
To find the next resonant frequency, look around the last one you identified, reducing it from -1 to -3dB where it resonates. If the adjustment adds clarity without making the sound thin or unnatural, you’ve likely found the next one.
For the next resonating frequencies, try around 500Hz-700Hz and boost with a high Q filter. Remove up to -3dB while maintaining the loudness with the output gain of the EQ plugin.
After adding the filter, turn on and off each filter to see the difference and follow your instinct. If you like it keep it otherwise its not needed.
III) High-Mid Range
Around 700Hz and 2500Hz, you may encounter some whistling resonances. Remove them with a high Q narrow filter, reducing them by up to -3dB, and ensure the overall loudness remains consistent.
If you need to add a little presence to the voice, consider boosting around 12kHz-15kHz with a low Q wide filter, be cautious, and boost no more than 2dB, as it can also emphasize sibilances.
3. Desser
After removing resonating frequencies the higher frequencies can breathe now and become clearer, louder, and sometimes harsh especially for sibilants. Such harsh sibilants set the podcast audience off. Something that we are not working for.
To remove brittle harshness in that area apply a desser that only acts dynamically on a given frequency and threshold. The common frequency range of harsh “ss” “cc” and “tt” sounds is 6kHz-7kHz. It’s 6kHz for male and 7kHz for female voices.
4. Compressor
Tips:-
- Mentain -24LUFS input and out loudness and use a LUFS meter for monitoring.
- If unsure about the release settings use Auto Release
- Use Multiple Compressors, Parallel Compression, Side Chain Compression, or Dukcing where suitable.
I) Analog Compressor
After removing all the unnecessary rumble and resonance, let’s make it sound cohesive, tight, warm, and a little aggressive.
To get the most out of our analog compressor input and output loudness should be -24LUFS.
Adjust the threshold for -2dB to -6dB gain reduction and recover the average loudness with make-up gain. Here are the ideal settings for smooth voice compression for a podcast recording.
Ratio 3:1-4:1
Fast Release with Auto Release or 1-10ms
Fast Attack with 5-20ms
If your podcast recording is a bit harsh try lowering the Release settings to 1ms. And to make it sound thick increase the attack time from 1-20ms and see where it sounds according to your taste.
ii) Digital Compressor
In case, you do not have an analog compressor. Try analog tube compressor emulation plugins and keep your podcast audio levels as mentioned above for the analog compressor. Compress your podcast recordings with the settings given above.
5. Saturation
The digital audio interfaces come equipped with pretty clean preamps having very low inherent noise and saturation, resulting in flat and cold sound.
To conquer this issue, at this stage of post-production, professional audio engineers add different kinds of saturation.
The goal is to make them sound warm, pleasant, and a bit more aggressive. It could be tape, tube, or transformer saturation, etc.
Though compression makes voice recordings sound smooth and even and a little aggressive. But still, it doesn’t sound like a professional radio or podcast show until we add some grit.
Audio engineers working with professional analog gears add saturation while using analog compression, EQ, limiter, etc. Analog gears have transformers, tubes, and Op-Amps that add a pleasant saturation to the audio signal.
However, audio engineers working in the box have multiple plugins available to add the desired amount of clean saturation to the audio signal. Most of the DAWs have built-in tape, tube, and transformer saturation plugins that sound quite impressive.
6. Limiter
After adding saturation to our equalized and compressed audio reduce volume peaks louder than -3dB with a limiter. The maximum reduction should not be more than -2dB. Driving a limiter too hard would result in a harsh and over-compressed sound.
To avoid more than -2dB of peak reduction reduce the gain from the first step which is the gain plugin or the fourth step which is the compressor.
7. Dithering
Dithering is a minuscule amount of digital noise added at the end of mastering. It masks the harshness of possible quantization errors that can occur when lowering the bit rate or sample rate of the files at any stage of processing files or when rendering the file to a lower bit depth and sample rate.
Even if not lowering the bit depth or sample rate dithering can be added. It reduces digital harshness.
To Apply dithering activate it while exporting the final mp3 file or add it manually with a DAW’s built plugin. A dithering plugin has different types and shapes of dithering noise for 16-24-bit depths. Try different types and select the one that sounds best to your ears.
8. Loudness
For podcast shows, -24 to -19 dB LUFS are loudness recommendations. It’s not a hard and fast rule but depends upon the quality of the recording materials. If it sounds too soft and quiet at -24dBLUFS try increasing the loudness and if it sounds a bit harsh at -19dBLUFS try decreasing the gain by a few dBs.
The main goal for the final average loudness is not achieving an exact number but making sure that it sounds warm, pleasant, and loud enough. So keep the loudness between the sweet spot -24dBLUFS to -19dBLUFS where you feel comfortable.
The final audio should not be very bright because MP3 compression tends to increase the brightness, which might be too bright or sometimes harsh.
5. Rendering
Most podcast hosting platforms support only MP3 files for uploading and distribution. We export and render the final mixdown of the podcast show as a mono 44khz and 320 Kbps MP3 file.