Your audio journey – Part 13 – Producing a basic podcast

This time around we turn our attention to Podcasting having, to this point, concentrated on voiceover and imaging and radio production.

We take a look through the steps of creating the Bees Radio Network Podcast which you can subscribe to at http://www.patreon.com/beesradionetwork.

The podcast is hosted by Graham Bell and myself with Graham connecting to me on Skype. At my end I record my microphone and Graham’s Skype call and Graham also creates a local recording at his end of just his microphone which he then sends to me. Then using the Skype recording of Graham I line up his high quality file he sends and delete the Skype guide track so I am editing a Podcast of two hosts both recorded at high quality.

From there it’s then a case of going through the podcast and tightening the joins so the conversation flows. At this stage also look out for coughs and mic bumps in the audio and those can be deleted and removed from the podcast given as clean a finished product as possible.

As I am recording my microphone and the Skype call at the same time my two files created are the exact timing of the Podcast. Graham starts his recording after me as I’m getting levels in our pre-recording chat so once I’ve lined up the recording Graham sends me with his Skype call and identified the beginning of the Podcast I can then delete the Skype recording knowing the two high quality recording as lined up so the Podcast is in the right time.

From this point when making any changes to line up the Podcast it’s important to move both hosts tracks together in the multitrack so the conversation remains aligned. With that said, if you’re deleting any coughing or mic bumps or other unwanted audio then it’s important to only delete the portion from that track and to remember to delete the bit you want and add fades out and in around the deletion. When deleting from a single track do not ripple delete otherwise you’ll affect the alignment of the podcast.

Hopefully the video explains the basics of how to edit the podcast including adding processing to each track and an overall touch of compression.

Once the Podcast is edited and mixed down it then needs to be finalised for upload to the Podcast host. Open the metadata window and complete the required fields using the comments section to describe the episode. In order to add artwork to the artwork field you’ll have to first save the file as an mp3 file but I would recommend doing this last as saving to mp3 is a compressed format so each time you save you compress the audio.

First I recommend saving the file as a wav file which retains the quality. Then open the match loudness window in Audition and drag the file in to match loudness and from there select a loudness of -16 LUFS which is the accepted Podcast standard.

Once this is done save the file to an mp3 format, add Podcast artwork in the metadata window and save the episode ready to upload to your host and distribute.

I would recommend keeping a saved copy of the multi-track session you edited in just in case you spot any errors that made it through the editing and have to go back and make any changes.

Just as a final tip on recording a podcast with two hosts, I have a separate track recorded of my microphone and Graham’s Skype recording. If your audio set up doesn’t allow you to do this I would recommend a different approach of panning your microphone to the left channel and the Skype call to the right channel so you can then split this stereo recording into two mono recordings by dragging the left channel to one mono track in the multitrack file and the right to a second mono channel in the multitrack. In terms of editing either recording in the multi-track in two separate tracks or recording in the waveform view with a left and right pan will both allow you easy editing of the podcast.

A tip also on compression for a podcast is not to go too far! While in previous videos we’ve gone heavy on compression I’d say with a Podcast it’s important to not go too heavy and keep compression to a minimum. You’re looking to use light compression to try and retain some dynamic range in the audio but also boost any very quiet bits a little and reduce any very loud buts for a more uniform finished audio level.