Author: Billy

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The Room Where It Happens

One of the most, if not the most overlooked aspects of a quality recording is room acoustics. Just walk into the bathroom and shut the door. Place yourself in the middle of the room and clap your hands. Hear that echo? That is precisely the wrong place to record your podcast. If you walk into the room you plan to record your podcast and do the same thing and get a similar result your going to have problems. The recording will sound “confused” with your voice being heard multiple times at multiple levels and often one sentence bleeding into the next. What does a good space sound like? Surprisingly you probably have a great example sitting in your garage or driveway. Most cars (or SUVs for that matter) are near studio-quality recording spaces but I don’t expect you to do your podcast in one. Try clapping your hands in the car. It should be a single sharp tone without any echo at all, which is much closer to what you are looking for.

So what if your space sounds more like the bathroom? There are a few steps you can take to lower the amount of echo to make the space better suited to recording. First, look around the space and see if there are any hard surfaces you can eliminate. Hardwood floor? Try a rug. Windows? Some drapes will do. Add soft items to the room such as fabric furniture, especially in corners. You can even put up a rod and some thick drapes along a wall, or go the route of acoustic foam or the less permanent but more costly acoustic panels on the walls. Two things to consider with acoustic foam or panels. First, make sure you are buying a product that is fire-retardant. Cheap acoustic foam that isn’t certified to be flame retardant is like putting fuel all over your walls. Second, you don’t need 100% coverage to be effective as even 25% coverage can make a big difference. Eliminating all the echo is not the goal, just reducing it so it isn’t noticeable. Lastly don’t think that adding sound panels to your walls will keep outside noises from getting into the room or for that matter keeping your sound inside the room, they are merely to reduce sound reflections, they are not “soundproofing” materials. To keep the room sounds from getting in, or out, you need to stop air movement between spaces such as sealing doors with weather stripping or a door sweep at the bottom to make it as close to air-tight as possible. If possible heating and AC vents should be closed as they can often bring in sounds from the entire house. Once you have a reasonably good-sounding room then spend your time, money, and effort into addressing specific issues that are particular to your space rather than initially trying to address every issue that “could” be a problem when in fact it might not even be a problem at all.  

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A Few Thoughts on Microphones

Like so many things in audio we naturally gravitate towards the things, we perceive as the “perfect” tool to use for a task.  As a key player in your podcasting arsenal, the microphone is the tool you’ll often obsess over.  Let’s take a minute to look at the basic types of microphones and see how obsessing over perfect quality can often lead to less-than-perfect results.

Regarding microphones, we have two basic choices: the dynamic and the condenser. The dynamic microphone takes the sound energy in the air and transfers it with a thin diaphragm and a coil of wires into a small amount of electrical energy. This type of microphone is the older of the two designs and has a couple of inherent downsides.  First, it very rarely reproduces the entire audio spectrum humans can be capable of hearing, and second, the dynamic microphone needs some strong preamplification to turn the minuscule amount of electrical energy (from a source such as normal conversation) into something usable. 

The condenser microphone still has a diaphragm that moves in relation to sound energy but then handles things differently. The condenser microphone has a solid metal plate behind the diaphragm that is also layered with a very thin layer of metal. The slight changes in distance between these two metal plates create the slightest amount of electrical current, and this is amplified by an internal circuit powered by “phantom power” the microphone receives through the mic cable from the mic preamp.  As the diaphragm of the microphone is not connected to a coil to produce an electric current such as a dynamic microphone’s is, it is much lighter and much more sensitive in both the level of audio it can capture as well as the range of frequencies.

On paper, the condenser microphone has the clear advantage of being the “better” tool for the job.  If you look at the frequency response chart of a well-loved dynamic microphone such as the Shure SM58 and place it next to almost any condenser you’d come to the conclusion that the condenser produces a more realistic reproduction of the source material over a much wider range of frequencies.  But much like a Ferrari is a superior vehicle in almost every way to Toyota Camry, taking a Ferrari to the grocery store is largely overkill. The human voice resides over a much smaller part of the frequency spectrum so a dynamic microphone can handle those frequencies with ease while also not reproducing frequencies we don’t need (or want) such as the rumble of an air conditioner or the high-pitched whine of a computer fan or exaggerate every mouth noise you make while speaking.  Some dynamics, such as the Electro-Voice RE-20 or RE-320, also reduce the phenomenon of the “proximity effect”, where the voice can become very bass heavy when the speaker is too close or thin when they move further away or to the side.  This can make your audio file very hard to listen to and the levels vary wildly if you don’t practice the perfect microphone technique.

In summary, don’t be fooled by the frequency response graph of the condenser microphone and assume it will be the better tool for the job.  Do yourself a favor and look for a good quality dynamic microphone for podcasting, there is a reason this is the type of microphone found in almost all radio studios.          

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Editing – Let’s Begin at the End

Picking up where we left off, you have your podcast recorded and your editing notes at hand. Where do you begin? Naturally, you will want to edit that inevitable little bit of silence at the start of the recording but this will lead to a problem that will get progressively worse. If you remove just a second from the beginning of the show you’ll shift all of your editing times by one second. That’s not too bad, you’ll find the edits still, but after a few edits suddenly you’ll be hunting as the times will be a vague reference rather than a specific point in time. When it comes to audio editing the best practice is to begin at the end, it won’t matter how much you remove because all the subsequent edits will still be at the correct time you recorded on your edit sheet.

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Podcasting – Tools of the Trade

Two of the most important tools I have with me when recording a podcast are not audio-related items at all; pen and paper. Editing a program is one of the most powerful tools for making a listenable program the podcaster has at their disposal. Without a guide on when and what to edit you’ll be forced to listen to the program again, in its entirety, which can be time-consuming and tedious. So rather than using something electronic we keep it simple and just use a pen and paper. Just a quick note including the time and a basic description of the reason for editing is all that’s required. My page will often say something like “3:19 cough” (self-explanatory) or “5:20 double take” (that brief start to a sentence you almost immediately rephrase). These are the types of things that are easy to miss in editing as they are not visually apparent in the waveform when editing but make it easier to listen to the show, especially while wearing headphones. The second main use for the pen and paper is to write down notes you wish to convey to the host or to a guest that you don’t wish to say out loud. Sometimes it’s as simple as the current length of a segment or a reminder of a question the host wanted to ask. Sometimes it is to remind someone to “stay on the mic.” Stopping a recording to convey messages is one of the worst things you can do as it almost always affects the “flow” of the conversation as it reminds everyone involved of the recording aspect of what you are doing, and once the “flow” is gone it is very difficult to get it going again.

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About 1066 Productions

Star of screen and stage, and in many of my favorite movies, M. Emmett Walsh.

Started in 2005, 1066 Productions began as a way to do on-location podcasting for music and broadcasting. Podcasts such as “Live at The Green Mill”, “The Skinny and Houli Show” and “The Craic” took podcasting beyond the studio. With almost 1000 live shows recorded we have the experience to make your podcast the best it can be either in the studio or in front of a live audience. 1066 Productions can help during any phase of your podcasting journey. We can assist in studio design, gear purchases, and setup. We can troubleshoot specific issues you may be having with your current recording setup. With more than 20 years of professional broadcast experience, we know what works.

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Podcast Consulting

Have a podcast and you just can’t seem to git it to sound how you’d like? 1066 Productions has thousands of hours or real-world broadcast experience from the recording all the way to the listener and we can consult you and best practices, or if you just need someone to edit and master your podcast we can turn those projects around, usually in 24 hours.