238: How To Handle Loudness Properly in All Stages of Your Podcast Production Workflow

09/08/22 • 26 min

1 Listener

NOTE: In this episode I’m using a Sennheiser e835 microphone into my Portico 2 channel strip and using these plugins in post: KIT BB N105, Shadow Hills Class A Mastering Compressor, Saturn 2, and Aquamarine 4.

Here's the summary of what I discuss on How To Handle Loudness Properly in All Stages of Your Podcast Production Workflow:

Record all raw tracks at a healthy level (not too low or too hot)
Set all raw tracks to the same LUFS before bringing them into your DAW. (I do this at the end of my cleanup phase after I remove background noise, plosives, hums, and other blemishes)
Use Compression and/or MaxxVolume/Vocal Rider to compress/tame the loud parts as well as boost the lower volume parts. (NOTE: This step will effectively amplify any background noise, so be sure to absolutely minimize the background noise before pressing record!)
Adjust the overall level of each participant so they all sound good compared to each other. (as part of your mixing phase, where you can also use other processing like EQ, saturation, etc.)
After rendering the final episode audio, process this file so it adheres to the “unofficial” loudness standards of podcasting: -19 LUFS for mono episodes, or -16 LUFS for stereo episodes.

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 January 10, 2023! (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

Here's the summary of what I discuss on How To Handle Loudness Properly in All Stages of Your Podcast Production Workflow:

Record all raw tracks at a healthy level (not too low or too hot)
Set all raw tracks to the same LUFS before bringing them into your DAW. (I do this at the end of my cleanup phase after I remove background noise, plosives, hums, and other blemishes)
Use Compression and/or MaxxVolume/Vocal Rider to compress/tame the loud parts as well as boost the lower volume parts. (NOTE: This step will effectively amplify any background noise, so be sure to absolutely minimize the background noise before pressing record!)
Adjust the overall level of each participant so they all sound good compared to each other. (as part of your mixing phase, where you can also use other processing like EQ, saturation, etc.)
After rendering the final episode audio, process this file so it adheres to the “unofficial” loudness standards of podcasting: -19 LUFS for mono episodes, or -16 LUFS for stereo episodes.

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 January 10, 2023! (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

Previous 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

Next Episode

239: Mistakes I’ve Made Producing Podcasts

Today I’m going to discuss some mistakes I’ve made producing podcasts.

Microphone: In this episode I’m using my Electro-Voice RE320 microphone plugged into my Neve Portico II channel strip (using compression, EQ and a bit of saturation). The same microphone you see in my daily short videos here.

I mention a recent hiking experience I had where a guy who saw my shirt (which says Ask Me About My Podcast) and asked, "What's your podcast?" And then immediately added, "JUST KIDDING!” We all laughed and he didn’t ask again so I didn’t mention my podcast at all. HA

Mistakes I’ve Made Producing Podcasts:

I published one of my client’s episodes with 30 seconds of silence at the beginning. The client alerted me and I fixed it immediately.
During an online recording session, after a participant dropped off and then returned, I forgot to press record again in Squadcast, but of course I was recording a local backup which I ended up using (though it was a bit of a pain because all participants were mixed together in the backup recording). NOTE: Squadcast fixed this issue a long time ago.
On an in-person recording session I forgot to hit record and realized it after about 5 minutes so we had to start the episode over again and sort of feign authentic enthusiasm when redoing the intro.
I've mixed audio on my monitor speakers while mistakenly using the calibration profile for my headphones.
Untold inaccuracies using processors too aggressively, or not aggressively enough — Compression, de-noise, de-plosive, EQ, etc.

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 January 10, 2023! (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