What can you do if your podcast audio doesn’t sound great?
It depends how bad the original recording is.
Some audio you can fix but the more noise you remove from a recording the more you also remove the natural warmth and clarity in your voice.
And since a podcast is usually being listened to through headphones, there’s nowhere to hide so you want to do as little to the audio as possible otherwise it will sound slightly robotic and unnatural (which isn’t good).
Even if the listener can’t pinpoint exactly why it doesn’t sound right, they’ll subconsciously feel that it doesn’t sound like a real person.
Even a slight change in the way you speak can be annoying enough for some people to turn off (which you don’t want).
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Why it’s best practice to think about the quality of your audio when you’re recording
The best approach when recording audio is to focus on what you’re recording in the moment rather than relying on fixing it later.
That means…
- Using a quality microphone – a dynamic microphone like the Shure MV7 will work well in an untreated room
- Thinking about where you’re recording – avoid large open spaces with lots of echo and reflective surfaces, and opt for a quiet room with soft furnishings to absorb sound
- Practising proper mic technique – the further away you are from your microphone the more room noise you’ll pick up and the less intimate the recording will sound but make sure you use a pop filter to avoid pops
- Monitoring your record – headphones are essential if you want to record high quality audio
All of this will help you get the best possible recording of your voice at the time which means you won’t have to rely on post-production tools or AI to improve the audio later (which can negatively impact the sound of your show).
Why fixing your podcast audio after it’s recorded isn’t a perfect solution
Audio repair tools have come A LONG way but they’re not perfect.
If you’re trying to remove distracting noise in your recording you’re also going to remove the audio detail in your voice that makes you sound warm and engaging.
And if you’re trying to fix echo in a room, certain tools can leave your voice sounding hollow, which isn’t good.
Ultimately, when a listener hears your podcast you want it to sound like you’re sitting with them having a conversation and if post-production tools are over-used they can lead to your voice sounding processed, robotic and unnatural.
And that won’t sound good to your audience.
Ideally, post-processing should be used to enhance good audio, not fix a bad recording.
A light touch with this stuff is always the best way to go (and it’s why thinking about your recording when you’re behind a microphone is always the smartest option).
Common audio issues and solutions
Below are some of the common problems that can arise when recording audio and tools that can help you fix them.
When using any of these programs the most important tool you have is your ear, so listen critically and think to yourself “Does this sound natural?”
If you’re only focused on whether audio sounds better than it did before you can lose sight of what the ultimate goal is… sounding like you.
Background noise (hums, air conditioners, traffic)
Tools: DeNoise (Adobe Audition, iZotope RX, Auphonic)
Tip: Use noise reduction subtly to avoid your voice sounding robotic
Reverb and echo (recording in an untreated room)
Tools: DeReverb (Adobe Audition, iZotope RX)
Tip: Reverb is hard to remove cleanly so it’s always best to record in a space that contains soft furnishings like rugs, curtains or soundproof panels
Low volume or inconsistent levels
Tools: Auphonic, Hindenburg
Tip: Make sure all your episodes are a consistent volume by exporting them at -16LUFS
Mouth clicks, pops and plosives
Tools: De-click (iZotope RX), De-esser (Adobe Audition)
Tip: Use a pop filter to minimise plosives, make sure you’re hydrated when recording which will help with mouth clicks, practice good mic technique and use headphones while recording, so you can re-record plosives in the moment rather than trying to remove them later.
Hiss, electrical hum and interference
Tools: De-hum (iZotope RX, Adobe Audition), Auphonic
Tip: Check cables and electronic devices that could be interfering with the recording (hard drives can often vibrate and be picked up by the microphone).
AI tools vs manual editing
AI
There are some great tools being developed and the tech is improving everyday but you often have less control over the resulting audio.
With AI you usually upload the audio and it goes to work applying whatever processing it thinks is right, but that can result in audio that sounds artificial e.g. Adobe Enhance, Auphonic
Manual tools
These tools give you more control because you can tweak a lot more of the settings BUT that means you need to know what settings to tweak.
When you’re not familiar with these platforms it’s easy to make audio sound worse if you don’t know what you’re doing eg. iZotope RX, Adobe Audition, Hindenburg.
Sometimes the easier option will be using AI but you want to make sure you’re listening to the final product critically to ensure it still sounds like you.
Conclusion: Don’t rely on fixing your podcast audio ‘in post’
While the tech is improving and this technology can sometimes save you, you should be thinking about post-processing as a path of last resort, or a way to improve the audio you’ve got rather than fix it entirely.
If you go into every record thinking you can fix things later you’ll end up with audio you can’t use at all, or that you need to edit so much you remove all the elements of your voice that make you sound warm and engaging.
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Got a question about podcasting? Send it my way so I can answer it on the podcast!
Hello there. Welcome to the show.
In today's episode, I'm going to be answering a question from Kat, which is, is it easy to fix audio after you've recorded it?
Hmm, depends. Some audio, yeah. Some audio? I’d throw it in the bin.
I would preface this episode with a little bit of a disclaimer, and that is that you do not want to rely on fixing your audio in post ever. Because if you do, you are going to get yourself into a pickle.
You need to be thinking about the audio that you are recording, when you are recording it, always.
And you need to be listening with headphones and hearing what your audience is hearing and thinking, okay, I can hear the air conditioner, I'm going to turn that off. Or I can hear my bathroom fan, I've got to go and close the door, or whatever it is. You need to make those changes there and then.
Because while you can do some things to audio after you have recorded, it is always going to sound better if you have the best quality audio at the moment you're recording, and the changes that you need to make are minimal.
The thing that you need to understand when you are fixing audio in post, or after you've recorded it, is that you're basically removing stuff from an audio file, right?
So if you've got the sound of an air conditioner in the background, or the hum of your hard drive or something or other, then to fix that, you have to remove it. But you also, at the same time that you're removing that sound, you are removing elements of your voice.
So the more that you remove, the more warmth you remove in your voice, the more electronic you sound, the more robotic you sound. I have heard some processing where you're just like, far out, did you listen to this? Like, nobody sounds like this. It sounds like a robot.
And even some people who work in audio, sometimes you get so comfortable with the sound of that processing that you can't even tell what a human sounds like anymore. But ideally, you want it to sound like somebody is sitting next to you.
And the more of that processing you do after the fact, the less it is going to sound like a human and the more it's going to sound like a robot. And it's hard to describe what that sounds like, but you can hear it, especially in the moments when you hear someone intake their breath.
That's where it kind of sounds really weird and scratchy almost. But you want to do as little of that to the track as possible.
Some of the tools that I use in Adobe Audition are Denoise. So that takes a portion of the noise, like you take the noise that's in the background, you capture that, and then you run the program over it so that it removes that noise.
Another one is Dereverb, which can get rid of some echo. Again, you need to be a bit finicky with how you fiddle with the settings in the back end.
And if you're not familiar with it, it's really hard to work out how to get it just right. You can dial things up and down, whatever, but you might be dialing up and down for ages and think, I don't know that this is working.
There is a great new tool — I mean, the world of AI, everything is sort of becoming much easier to do — called Adobe Enhance, by Adobe, obviously, that I have had some great success with. That does clean out some of the background noise and doesn't seem to really badly affect the vocals. So I would trial that if you have some audio that is needing a bit of a cleanup.
I never put it at 100. You can put it all the way up to 100, but I always put it somewhere below 30%. Ideally you just want to put enough to clean the problem, but not so much that you are taking that warmth out of your voice.
And the best-case scenario is always just to be listening to what you are recording and to make sure that you have got the best quality audio at the time. Because the best thing to do is to not even touch it, to just edit it, but to not need to do anything to that audio because it sounds really great.
Naturally, sometimes you are in a space — I record in my lounge room, I have nowhere else to record — I've done everything that I can to this space to make it as audio-friendly as possible.
But then I do just need a little bit of something over the top to make it sound a little bit more contained, and that's fine.
But ideally you don't want to think, oh God, this sounds terrible, but it doesn't matter, I'll fix it in post. Because honestly, for the most part you probably get audio that you really can't do anything with. If it's really bad, then you can't fix it in post and you'll just have to chuck it in the bin. And you don't want to be getting into that scenario.
So really think about your edit and your finished product when you are sitting down to record. And then if you need to do some light tweaks using a program like Adobe Enhance, try that, see if it works.
I've had a lot of people have great success with it, and also really take out some serious background noise in it where you're like, I didn't think that this could actually disappear, but it has.
You just want to make sure that you're always listening to it with a bit of a critical ear and saying, does this sound too robotic? Like, have I overdone it? And peel back on it so that you can still get that warmth and genuine tone in your voice.
Hope that has helped you think about audio and make sure that you think about it at the moment of recording, because “fix it in post” will get you in trouble. I promise you that.
If you've got a question that you would like answered, please just head to the link in the description of the episode.
And if you want a bit more help with your show, then head to podschool.com.au and you can find out all about my online podcasting course.
I'll see you next week.
