How to Create Your Own Podcasts
You’ve got a microphone. You’ve got some web space. And you have a great idea for a podcast. Now, it’s onto the fun bit — the recording. Even if you’ve had a couple of false starts, don’t worry — this is completely normal, especially if you haven’t had much recording practice. If you’re ready to get serious, though, you’ve come to the right place. This step-by-step tutorial will help you master the art of making your own podcast.
Before beginning to record, and whatever your specific equipment, take time to prepare and give yourself the best chance of a good-quality recording. Ideally, use a room that has plenty of space for you to work and that contains primarily soft furnishings — this cuts down dramatically on echoes/reverb, which can’t really be removed in post-production. If you don’t have such a room, don’t fret. Luckily, podcast audiences don’t demand anything like the level of audio found in music, voice over, or radio work. A little echo is no big deal as long as it’s not unpleasant to listen to, and many people even add some in to provide a more booming radio-voice sound. Even a cupboard-style room with hard walls and wood flooring can be made usable by turning the microphone sensitivity down a little, or, if it really is a problem, hanging up a blanket helps dampen the sound. It’s also possible to invest in a microphone screen/vocal booth for between $100–$270 that essentially wraps acoustic foam around the back of your microphone. Save your money unless you’ve no other option, or are setting up a more general studio.
Now that you have the setup sorted out, it’s time to do a little groundwork — especially if you’re recording with another person and working without a script. Have a list of topics you want to cover, and have a clock or timer running (we use our iPad) to serve as a visible reminder. It’s easy to lose track of time while recording, and to get sidetracked. While a podcast can be any length you like, fifteen minutes is a good length to talk about one subject within a podcast, while half an hour to an hour is a reasonable period for the entire show. Remember, most people listen to podcasts on the move rather than at their computers, and too many breaks and subject changes gets jarring and makes it hard to remember what’s already been said. On the other side, anything under five minutes will be too short for people to invest in, and not worth your effort, either.
Good things to decide and practice in advance include how you’re going to introduce your podcast, as well as the order you plan to introduce guests and how to finish it. Plus, you need to think of a name for it.
Giving the link to your website/podcast host is the obvious starter there, as well as reminding listeners to rate you on iTunes — though this is best saved for a couple of podcasts in. You can ignore other podcast directories at this point.
Finally, don’t forget about yourself. Podcasting can be extremely hard on the voice, especially early on. Always have room-temperature water on standby, and hydrate yourself in advance. As you approach the recording session, avoid soft drinks, milk, coffee, and tea for the sake of your voice and the quality of your recording. And it goes almost without saying — if talking starts feeling uncomfortable, take a break. You can always pick it up later on.
1. Prepare to Record
If you need recording software, download Audacity from http://audacity.sourceforge.net. It’s an easy tool to use. In the top left, you’ll find the playback controls, and next to those, your main tools — the most important being the Selection tool for selecting a point, the two arrows for moving an audio file around, and the zoom control. Click with the latter to zoom in, Shift-click to zoom out. Volume settings are in the top-right, and not to be confused with the ones by each track. The first just determines how loud you hear everything. The second, how loud the track actually is. Most of the other buttons you can safely ignore.
2. Volume Control
Make sure your microphone/mixer is plugged in over USB (directly, rather than via a hub) and make sure it’s set as the recording device in Audacity — here, we’re using a Rode Podcaster. Next, use Spotlight to find an app called Audio Midi Setup and select your microphone. Under Input, the Master slider controls the recording input level. The higher it is, the more sensitive your microphone will be. It’s possible to control this using the slider in Audacity, but this is a consistent place to check whatever app you’re using, and one where the volume is given as a number rather than just a basic slider.
3. Test Your Volume
Set the volume to 1.0 initially. In Audacity, look for the volume settings in the middle of the screen, click the arrow by the microphone, and pick “start monitoring.” Now, talk into the microphone in your normal voice, a little louder, and finally, more excitably. The volume indicator should go nearly, but not quite all the way across — capping somewhere between -6 and -12. When you shout, it’s going to spike — to compensate, move your head farther from the microphone. The actual volume level can be changed later. If it reaches 0dB during recording, though, the audio will be clipped and unpleasant.
4. Begin Recording
Save the project, giving it a name, and click the big red record button. If you need to pause the recording, press pause rather than the stop button. If you stop, pressing record creates a new track and goes back to the start. Pausing and unpausing continues where you left off. If you find yourself doing a lot of takes, try a big loud clap into the microphone to separate sections — this gives you an obvious peak in the waveform to find. Also, at the end, sit absolutely silently for about 10 seconds, so that the microphone can record some ambient noise to help clean things up later.
5. Prepare for Editing
To zoom in, use the magnifying glass tool. You should also drag down on the bottom of each audio track to see the waveform more clearly. This makes it easier to target bits of noise, and see any coughs, etc. To select part of the waveform, choose the caret-shaped tool from the top and click and drag. This marks the selection in blue. You can also select each side and nudge it, and to deselect it, click outside the selection. Don’t edit straight in your recording, though — create a new file, then cut and paste the bits you want into it. Press Command + X to cut a selection in the recording. Click where you want it on the new timeline, and tap Command + V to paste.
6. Combining Recordings
For Internet recording, you can record directly from tools like Skype, but the professional way is for everyone to record their own side with a microphone/headset combination and the editor to merge them together as multiple audio tracks. To get the two recordings in sync, start each recording with a “3…2…1…” and loud clap. Once imported, this makes it easy to see where they should overlap. In your edit file, after aligning them, choose “Sync Lock” under the Tracks menu. Now, cuts and added silences affect all equally. To fix the inevitable volume differences, tweak the sliders on the left-hand side.
7. Snap, Crackle, and Pop
Your microphone picks up a lot of noises, and your audience doesn’t want to hear all of them. Put on your best headphones. Crank up the volume. Zoom in using the magnifying glass. Start listening to each track, ready to hit stop when you hear noises such as sharp breaths. Use the Selection tool to select these moments and either kill them with Command + X, or replace them with silence with Command + L. Don’t be tempted to use a filter to do this for you. It’s better to go through it methodically, in order to avoid damaging the rest of your audio.
8. Precision Editing
For problems that can’t just be silenced, like a sudden slurp in a section you don’t have a better take to drop in, select the Pen tool. Zoom into the track until the waveform is replaced with a series of dots. You can now draw volume changes onto the wave directly, creating troughs that get rid of the worst of the unwanted noise without the harsh snap of a cut or silence. As well as controlling the level of the volume drop, this lets you control the speed of transition. You don’t have to remove sounds entirely this way, just dull them. Option-clicking smooths the wave. Holding Control after clicking just affects a single dot.
9. Noise Removal
Thankfully, little noises are an easier matter to sort out. Select the silence from the end of the recording, then from the Effect menu, choose Noise Reduction. Click “Get Noise Profile.” This tells Audacity what the ambient in your room is — the hum of plugs, or your gentle breathing, for instance. Now, you can tweak the settings underneath to get rid of it. This takes tweaking for each recording. Focus on the top two options: how much to reduce noise, and what the threshold for it is. Both should be as little as you can get away with. Use Preview until it sounds about right.
10. Leveling
While we’ll look at a more flexible way shortly, Audacity offers a “Leveler” tool designed to reduce the gap between loud and soft audio, and produce a more consistent volume. This compensates for moments when your head was slightly farther from the microphone, or you simply spoke a little more softly, during a section. It’s not a miracle worker, and if the Light or Moderate settings aren’t enough, the higher strength ones are likely to cause a hit to your sound quality. If you’re planning to do more detailed mastering, don’t do this. As a quick way to make a podcast sound better, though, it’s fine.
11. Volume Control
Volume is handled in dB, and you always deal in negative numbers. When setting volume, you’re actually adding “gain”; the definitions don’t really matter for now, but that’s how it’s described. To avoid blowing out an unwary listener’s ears, a podcast should max out at around -12 to -6dB, bottoming out at around -24. For a single track, this is easy — the Amplify Effect lets you pick a peak volume and adjust accordingly. For multiple tracks, use the Normalize tool instead, bringing them to the same peak (“maximum amplitude”) level. The overall dB is based on all tracks together, though, so experiment to find a good balance.
12. Adding Music
Music should be added as its own track, its volume adjusted to complement the spoken word tracks rather than vice versa. Basic Fade In and Fade Out effects are in the Effect menu, as is an Adjustable Fade with more options. Audacity also offers an “Auto Duck” tool. This automatically dips one track (usually music) when another is making noise so that it’s more prominent. You can pick the amount and how harsh the effect should be. For podcasts, though, you’re generally only going to be using music as an intro and as breaks. Having it run throughout is distracting, unless, of course, it’s a dedicated music podcast.
13. Extra Time Spent
This is actually enough editing for most podcasts, for a number of reasons: they’re not expected to have been through the hands of a professional audio engineer, chances are they’re going to be listened to through less-than-amazing headphones, and most importantly, because the more advanced things you can do are a great way to destroy your sound quality. Done properly, though, they can add a lot, compensating for weaknesses in your equipment, and providing what’s usually referred to as “radio sound” — that booming, full-throated resonance that sounds like it should be declaring, “This is World News Tonight.”
14. Deepen Your Voice
This is one of the easiest but most obvious edits, especially if using a budget microphone, the sound from which is often tinny and hollow. Go to Effect/Change Pitch and drop it by just a little — about 5 percent or so at most, so it still sounds like you. You can also get good effects in the Reverb tool by using the Vocal presets (click the Load button) or turning down the actual Reverberance and Pre-Delay to sound just full-bodied rather than actually echoing. Male voices especially can also benefit from a bit more bass, courtesy of Bass And Treble. All of these options are in the Effects menu.
15. Compression
Compressors reduce the audio range of your sound, which allows it to be amplified without the louder parts being clipped — much as we did with Leveler, but with more control. Audacity’s Compressor unfortunately doesn’t have presets, but its standard options are sufficient for podcasting. Select Compressor in the Effects menu, then untick “make-up gain” and adjust Noise Floor to around -20. Now, using Amplify or Normalize gets it as loud as you need, without spikes causing a problem. That said, most podcast editors are fine just using the one-click leveler and won’t notice any meaningful difference.
16. Equalization
Equalization is the processing of frequencies, and if you choose it in the Effects menu, you see it has a few handy presets. It’s not as complex as it looks, though, with the left side of the curve handling bass, the right treble, and the middle affecting the overall sound. In the presets, select “bass boost” to see how that looks — for these purposes, that’s the most important to play with. Also, try Telephone and Walkie Talkie to see how easy it is to apply a quick effect to your sound. These can be very handy if your podcast is going to include skits of any sort, or you want to simulate someone phoning in to your show.
17. Fixing P-P-Plosives
Plosives come from air being sharply expelled into the microphone, primarily from the letter “p.” The best way to deal with them is not to record them, which can be done by using a “pop filter” in front of your microphone, or speaking just above it. After that, you can cut them directly, as with other noise. Alternatively, use the Equalizer, puling down gently from around the 200Hz point and bottoming out at around 40Hz as in the picture. This may take some experimentation, and it won’t get rid of the sound entirely, but it dims it to the point that it shouldn’t offend your audience’s ears.
18. Final Export
MP3 is the official podcast format, and for the most part, you don’t need to worry about the settings. When you’re also including music, though, it’s worth jumping into the Options and boosting the quality from its default 128kbps to 192kbps. One thing to be careful of is your audio sources — if you use both mono and stereo, it can sound strange in the final edit. You can separate or turn a stereo track mono in the Tracks menu. You can also drag the L/R sliders on your mono tracks to move from one ear to the other. Don’t go all the way to separate multiple voices; a little is effective, a lot is unpleasant.