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Hey Jamie thanks for the compliment about my audio. I thought that was really cool to see an email. Sorry it's taken me a little bit to get back to you. Just had some things going on here. So your question was.
How do I capture great audio? The first thing that I try to do is just always record in a quiet space. So obviously you know reducing the noise and you're environment is super important and everyone says that but it's worth mentioning because it's something that you do need to kind of stress on a little bit.
I have a home studio which is just basically a renovated bedroom that I have converted into a place where I record. I took the closet and I kind of put acoustical tiles in there to make it more conducive to recording and I also try when I can to stand up while I'm talking. I just find that get a better sound that way.
The next thing that I always try to do is observe proper microphone technique. You know you don't want to be too far or too close to your microphone. The closer that you are the more you risk clipping or overdriving the further you are the weaker the vocal will sound. It might sound a little tinny or just distant and that requires you to do more to bring it up and make it sound good in the forefront of the recording.
I spent a lot of time coaching whoever I'm talking to to make sure that they're staying close to the microphone at all times and they're being in a consistent consistent distance away from it.
It also doesn't hurt to have good equipment so what I've tried to do is invest in some decent microphones. I use a Shure SM7B microphone both for myself and for the guest. And I find that they sound really great. I don't have to do a lot to them in terms of processing.
I plug those into a Zoom recorder so I use Zoom H6 and I just find that it does a really great job recording. I've used other audio interfaces in the past and by far this is the best sounding one that I use as my Zoom. So I love to use that.
And then one thing that I like to do is actually edit the podcast you know go in after I've recorded things and take out filler words minimized breath, if I can, remove mistakes, dead air.
You know I'm just kind of clean things up to make things more concise. You know somebody is kind of rambling on and on about something I'll try to shorten it and I find that that does a lot in terms of how people think in terms of the quality of the audio.
The more concise that it sounds, the more confident that it sounds by taking out the stammers and stuff you know stutters and stuff like that, it's really helpful. Then I do some audio processing. So I use some plugins. I use one from Izotope called RX Elements and it's a bundled piece of software.
It allows you to take out hums and clicks and just little artifacts that you could find in your audio recording. There's another tool from Izotope that I use called Nectar 2 which has some really cool presets for different types of sounds and so I'll use that once in a while. I'll usually use a compressor to make sure that the audio remains at a consistent level because again it is hard sometimes to get people to stay in the same dynamic range and sometimes you don't want them to.
Sometimes you want them you know depending on what they're talking about. You know if there's excitement you want that to come through but you don't want to overdrive. You know with the sound is for the listener so I use a compressor. And then the final thing that I do is once I bounce down all the vocal tracks and the whole you know podcast basically into an MP3 file, I'll run it through Auphonic which is an online tool.
It's actually a desktop tool as well but most people use it as the online tool, and it's a leveler. And so just make sure that the volume of your podcast is optimized for mobile listening since most people listen to podcasts through mobile.
I found that that does a really good job at keeping you know the volume levels where they need to be. When you plug in earbuds are you putting in your car etc.
So those are the things that I do to get a good sound.
And I'm delighted that you thought that I had a good sound in the first place. It means that some of the stuff I'm doing must be working. So if you want to use this on your website Feel free to I'll send you an email a link that maybe you would consider putting in there. I have a podcast that actually is about helping people get better sound. So I think that this probably would go really well with this. These quotes are testimonial or whatever however you want to use it on your site. So anyway hopefully a great day. And again thanks for reaching out and they'll talk to you later.