236: Nine Tips for Podcast Audio Production

06/30/22 • 30 min

1 Listener

I overview 9 podcast production tips and techniques from recent Daily Goody posts Oct. 25 - Dec. 10, 2021 (see list below). You can sign up to receive Daily Goody’s in your email every day or a weekly roundup. Sign up here.

Daily Goody posts that I discussed in this episode:

Other Notes:

Podcast Services Mastermind Workshop ($199) - A one day immersive and collaborative in-person event designed to build & grow your service based business! Full explanation of the program HERE.
If you ever have questions please reach out!
The start date for the next PES semester is Sep. 13, 2022! (fyi, the course is delivered once per quarter)
If you’d like to share this show with any of your podcaster friends, feel free to send them a message saying, “Btw, here’s a show about podcast audio production you may find helpful” with this link: https://podcastengineeringschool.com/subscribe/)
My smaller course that I mentioned: Getting New Clients at Higher Rates

Let me know if you have any questions or need any help with anything, ~Chris

Daily Goody posts that I discussed in this episode:

Other Notes:

Podcast Services Mastermind Workshop ($199) - A one day immersive and collaborative in-person event designed to build & grow your service based business! Full explanation of the program HERE.
If you ever have questions please reach out!
The start date for the next PES semester is Sep. 13, 2022! (fyi, the course is delivered once per quarter)
If you’d like to share this show with any of your podcaster friends, feel free to send them a message saying, “Btw, here’s a show about podcast audio production you may find helpful” with this link: https://podcastengineeringschool.com/subscribe/)
My smaller course that I mentioned: Getting New Clients at Higher Rates

Let me know if you have any questions or need any help with anything, ~Chris

Previous Episode

235: My Experience at Podfest 2022

I've attended every single Podfest since 2014. And this year it was great to see so many friends and colleagues in person again!

Here are some of my experiences, notes and highlights of the event:

MY TALK:

"How to Use Compression & Normalization (Mandatory for Creating Professional Grade Audio)" ---> The full presentation will be published soon!

Outline what I covered:

Normalization (Peak and Loudness) (When and where to normalize audio)
Compression (Why, controls) (Demonstrations of compressors, upward compression, vocal riding, limiter, and a great sounding plugin chain)

*Audio Production Challenge for my listeners: Compress the ultra-dynamic audio clip that I used for demonstration in my presentation and send me your processed audio file!

Links to Apps and Plugins I Mentioned in My Talk at Podfest 2022 on “Compression and Normalization”

Link to 4 recent overview posts:

PODCASTING 2.0, CRYPTO, BLOCKCHAIN, ETC.:

Spoke with several podcast industry pro's about Podcasting 22.0, crypto integrations into podcast feeds and websites, etc. Hardly anyone was talking about this. It's still VERY early.
The Florida Bitcoin & Blockchain Summit

PRESENTATIONS I SAW:

Seth Silvers, CEO of Story On Media --- "The Roadmap To Using NFTs To Engage Your Podcast Audience and Increase Revenue"

Focus on "how can NFTs help build my community, instead of how can NFTs make me money."
Think of an NFT as an access card.
"Gratitude" NFTs just for people to support the show. (offer NFTs of every episode, etc.)
Never-ending tickets.
Uncut.fm "Collect NFTs from your favorite podcasts"

TikTok presentation by Melissa Hughes

*Mindset when creating TikTok posts: Document instead of create.

WHAT I WAS INSPIRED TO CHANGE/DO:

Create a new short course??
TikTok posting for marketing purposes? (Am I really going to commit to this?!?!)
Join a songwriting group (which I discussed w/Ashley Lehmann)

Other interesting things I learned about:

Snowpixel: AI-generated images (Natalie Champa Jennings told me about this)
"Dream 100", gatekeepers, (from my conversation with Seth Silvers) -- The Dream 100 are relationships with people and/or companies who can help me market my business to their audiences. Instead of focusing on marketing, focus on building these 100 relationships.

MY OVERALL EVALUATION OF THE ENTIRE EVENT:

All in all very good
Perhaps too many speakers and tracks, etc.
Felt a bit too spread out
I should have bought groceries

PEOPLE I HUNG OUT WITH:

Seth Silvers
Jennie Wren
Steve Stewart and Mark Deal
Glenn the Geek
Mike Helms
Marc Johanssen
Roy Stegman
Harry Duran
Natalie Champa Jennings
Ashley Lehmann
Paul Desmond Adams
Gordon Firemark
Bryan Entzminger
Julia Levine
Ross Brand
Dave Jackson
Dan Hughley
Daniel Abendroth
MANY OTHERS!

NOTE: The next semester of PES starts on Ju...

Next Episode

237: Max Flight and Your Mid-summer Podcast Re-evaluation

Returning all-star guest Max Flight helps me cover 17 ways to re-evaluate your podcast this summer, and we also discuss Max's latest podcast production workflow, equipment, software and more.

Max has been producing aviation podcasts since 2008:

Airplane Geeks (now over 700 episodes!)
The UAV Digest (looking at unmanned aircraft or drones)
Check out his main site — http://thirtythousandfeet.com/
He was previously on episodes 20 and 39 of this show
Check out his equipment, software, services and more below...

We discuss these 17 ways in which you can re-evaluate and improve your show this summer:

Update your goals
Change the format
Start using chapters
Personal focus on eliminating verbal crutches. (A short duration of intense focus will provide years of good results)
Change and/or add equipment
Sell old equipment
Treat yourself to that mic you've always wanted
Sound absorption and diffusers
Add a new segment
Cover new yet pertinent subject matter topics
Publish in video format as well
Publish better shownotes
Revamp your marketing
Evaluate the shows overall effectiveness
Hire a VA
Bring on a cohost
Decide to end your show???
Perhaps decide you want to become a professional podcast engineer/producer and earn a great living producing podcasts for clients - from home?!

And here's a lot more detail on Max's production:

Big changes since PES 20 and PES 39 mostly involve a simplification of the signal path:

Skype and cohost multi-enders replaced by Riverside.fm
Behringer mixer (still going strong since 2009!) replaced with MixPre
The MixPre handles all mic pre-amplification
Sound clips and pre-recorded segments played through Riverside, replacing an iOS soundboard
Backup recording is handled by the MixPre

Current equipment:

Sound Devices MixPre-6
Also use a MixPre-3 Gen 2 for field recordings
Zoom H5 for field recordings, too
Heil PR40
Sennheiser MD46 interview mic
Dell XPS 16 and MacBook Pro 15-inch, 2018 model, 2.9GHz i9 32 GB laptops
Audio Technica ATH-M50x headphones
Yamaha HS5 monitors

Software:

Riverside.fm (was Skype then Squadcast)
Hindenburg Journalist Pro
Audacity (yep!)
iZotope RX 8 Advanced
ID3 Editor for tagging

Services:

Media hosting: Blubrry and Libsyn
Website hosting: Bluehost and SiteGround

Notes from Max:

I'm retired and traveling more which makes weekly podcast production a bit more difficult.
Biggest current problem: At the home studio I mix/master with my Yamaha monitors, which I love. I can't master properly with the Audio Technica headphones when traveling.

Other Notes:

If you ever have questions please reach out!
You can sign up to receive Daily Goody’s in your email a few times per week or a weekly roundup. Sign up here.
The start date for the next PES semester is Sep. 13, 2022! (fyi, the course is delivered once per quarter)
If you’d like to share this show with any of your podcaster friends, feel free to send them a message saying, “Btw, here’s a show about podcast audio production you may find helpful” with this link: https://podcastengineeringschool.com/subscribe/)

Let me know if you have any questions or need any help with anything, ~Chris