Hey everybody, welcome to the show. If you missed last week’s episode, we’re going over possible noise causing problems and I’m talking about the typical things that I check when I’m troubleshooting a noise problem. In the last episode we talked about external noise problems like actual sound sources that might introduce noise into your podcast, we talked about some of the things that you can do to help eliminate or at least reduce that type of noise, and this week we’re gonna talk about a different type of noise, what I’ll call ‘internal’ noise or noise that is actually generated electronically and has a lot to do with the recording system itself.

This is an area that we can actually get into some pretty deep electronics theory, and I’m by no means an electronic engineer so I’m not gonna attempt to explain all that, so I’ll try to deal with it more in laymen’s terms. I have to say this though, audio equipment operates and transmits information by sending little pulses of electricity, and for right now I’m talking strictly about analog audio. Things like a microphone or an electric guitar.

What that means in a nut shell is that it is susceptible to interference from other electrical sources, like for example a computer, a high voltage cable, certain types of lighting. So there are a lot of factors to consider here and if I can’t fit it all into one episode, we’ll break it into two.

The important thing here is that you understand that electrical devices can interfere with other electrical devices, especially electronic devices. That interference can cause noise.

One of the most common types of noise is from a ground loop. Let’s say you’ve got two devices, and obviously it could be more, but to keep it simple we’ve got two. They are connected together, this could be a mixer and the sound card on your computer. Now that’s almost always a bad way to record but it’ll illustrate this problem for us.

These two devices, the mixer and the computer, are connected together, but somehow there is an alternate route that electricity can take between the two devices, and that causes your hum.

Now, if you’re using Audition or even older versions of Cool Edit Pro, you can actually analyze frequencies and if you do that, you’ll notice a large peak in the 50-60Hz range or even possibly one of its harmonics. If that’s the case, then you’ve probably got a ground loop problem. So how do you fix it?

Well, first of all, unplug everything. Disconnect your whole setup, whether it’s big or small. Electrically disconnect it, and disconnect audio cables too. I wanna mention something at this point, you might have a buddy or find an article online that tells you how to modify your gear by eliminating the ground and that your ground loop problem will disappear, don’t do it. It’s very dangerous, I’ve been shocked by the strings on an electric guitar because of fixes like that. I’ve even been hit on stage when my lips touched a mic. It doesn’t feel good, trust me.

We’re gonna start with the power distribution. Good audio quality starts with a good power distribution center. Fortunately the requirements for podcasters is not the same as for a band where they’ve got to run electricity sometimes a very long distance. Usually you’re plugged in just a few feet from the power source. Think about that though if the need arises for an extension cord, don’t use just any cord.

So here’s what you do. For simplicities sake, I’ve gotta select a specific scenario because there are thousands of possibilities and finding true ground loop problems can be a real bear. Let’s say I’ve got a computer, a Firewire audio capture device, an external mic preamp, and an effects processor, just for fun. I’m gonna turn my computer on. I’ll then make sure that my Firewire card is turned on and load up Audition or whatever application I’m running.

If you can monitor frequencies and levels, do it without anything plugged into the Firewire device. So your checking the noise floor of the device itself. You can even do a recording and see if there is any hum or noise.

More than likely, you’re not gonna have noise especially if the Firewire card is powered by the computer. Once you’ve verified that though, plug in the next device and connect the audio cables. In our example here it would probably be the effects processor. Again, nothing plugged into the input of the effects processor, but the output of the effects processor is plugged into the input of the Firewire card. Again, check your noise levels, and what we’re doing here applies really to any type of electronic noise like a hum or buzz, we’re just specifically troubleshooting a possible ground loop.

If you notice the hum at this point, don’t write the equipment off as being bad just yet, there are some things to check. Make sure your audio cables do not run parallel with power cables, in fact, it’s best if they don’t touch at all. If they have to touch, make sure they cross each other at right angles. This minimizes interference from the electrical lines.

Also, make sure the audio cables don’t pass over the equipment. Inside external audio equipment like an effects processor or compressor, there is a power supply. Pay attention to where you plug the power cable into the unit. That’s where the power supply is and your audio cable can pick up hum if it’s too close to that area.

Some other things to avoid, fluorescent lighting, older computer monitors, the big kind. Today’s LCD monitors aren’t a problem but those older ones have some very high voltages going on inside and can cause some problems if your audio cables are too close.

So let’s say that you check all this out and the effects processor still has a hum. Assuming, of course, that you have visual feedback that the hum is in the 50-60Hz range, more than likely there’s a ground problem inside the unit and you might want to get it checked out. To be sure, if you can, take the unit out of the audio chain. Turn it off. Plug in your other equipment, again, one at a time.

If you don’t have any more problem, have the unit checked out, and again, I don’t recommend you use alternate methods of modifying the power cable or anything, there are lift circuits that you can buy that will fix the problem, but that still isn’t the safest thing you can do, for either your equipment or the people operating it. I will give you a link in the show notes to an article on making modifications like this, just for educational purposes, but again I recommend you find an alternate route.

In addition to a ground loop problem, we’ve also got things that I kinda mentioned a minute ago, audio cables touching or being near to power cables, that’s bad. You can have radio interference, so make sure there isn’t anything that emits radio waves, microwave ovens can cause problems, cell phones can cause problems.

Let’s see, another tip is don’t buy cheap audio cables. You don’t have to spend $40 on a guitar cable, but don’t get the $5 ones either. Radio Shack has some real cheap junk, I know they’ve got a line of high priced cables too, but I always recommend you buy your audio cables from a music store. See if you can get shielded cables, and that’ll help reduce your noise and interference as well.

I think I’m gonna stop right here, but definitely check your system out, audio quality is a pretty big deal and anything you can do to eliminate problems like hum or buzz, is always good for your podcast. And let’s face it, people expect the best, so let’s try to give it to them.

Thanks for joining me this week, hopefully this info was helpful to you. Next week I’m not sure what I’m gonna do but I am getting ready to move back to Ohio so I’m gonna be putting the show together a bit early and I don’t have any extra filler shows right now, so hopefully I can get moved and get the studio setup in time to record after next week. I’m gonna start a series on using Camtasia Studio to record a video podcast and I think that’s gonna be a great sequence of tutorials because software training and online presentations is just so popular today, it’s a great way to reach your audience and Camtasia Studio is an excellent tool for that so look for those episodes coming sometime in August. I’m Ken Walker and you’ve been listening to The Podcasting Blog, the podcast that helps you podcast. Email me at podcasting@seocompany.ca or post a comment on the blog. Talk to you next week.

Thank you, thank you, thank you…is that not an excellent intro? Yes, it is! Although, I’m thinking about making another one just so I can mix things up a bit.

First off, let me apologize again for taking so long with this week’s podcast. I could give you a list of lame excuses but instead I’ll just say “Sorry, I’ll try to do better”. You know, it’s really lame when a podcast consultant tells you to produce your podcast on a regular basis, and they themselves barely get a new episode out each week, and very rarely is it released on the same day, I mean talk about lack of consistency, I mean practice what you preach right!

Anyhow, this week I wanna talk about script development in your podcast. Don’t get all scared cause I’m gonna have a kind of loose interpretation of the word script. Really, it’s a good idea to have something in writing for you to go by, but that doesn’t have to be a word for word script, it can be more of an outline, but it’s a good idea to have at least something to go by.

You want something that’s gonna help you with the flow of your podcast, and by all means that could be a word for word script. You’re gonna have to think about some things though because you don’t want your podcast to sound like you are reading it.

Now, that was a bit exaggerated, but you get the idea. I’ve got no problem with a word for word script, but you’ve got to have some skills as maybe a voice-over artist or at least practice a lot so you don’t sound like you’re reading it.

Obviously, this doesn’t work on every podcast cause you might have another host, you might have a guest to interview, whatever, but having some type of monologue or again, at least an outline, helps the flow go and it helps you not sound like a bumbling idiot!

If you’re gonna interview somebody, write down your questions, give some real thought to what your listeners want to hear and write down those thoughts. Think about what you’re gonna talk about, and I don’t mean just “I think we’ll talk about playing the guitar”, be more specific like “I wanna talk about health issues related to playing guitar, like arthritis, fatigue, and carpel tunnel syndrome.”

Don’t be afraid to make the podcast organic and branch out a little, but try to be focused. Now, one thing you can do is take a piece of paper and a pencil, or if you prefer use your computer, it kinda depends on how fast you can type, jot down an outline for yourself of how the show is gonna go.

Maybe you’ve got a section for news, a section for commercials, a how to section, whatever, jot down that format and leave space in between. Then go back and write down what you’re gonna talk about, general ideas, write down thoughts that you have, things you wanna talk about.

What I’m dealing with here is obviously a one-man-show type scenario where you’re doing all the planning and you’ll do the actual recording etc…Things work a lot different if you’re a big time podcaster and you’ve got people doing your recording and editing for you and maybe it’s more of a live show, but that’s a totally different animal.

So you’re the producer, you’re the host, you’re it. You can refer to those notes while you’re recording. Now, that being said, there are different styles of on-the-air announcers, if you want your podcast to sound ‘live’ and ‘natural’ then you’ve gotta either practice reading your script and not sounding like you’re reading, or you’ve gotta work from just an outline and do everything in a less ‘produced’ style.

On the other hand, a lot of people like the CNN or NPR style where it’s pretty obvious that there are no emotions involved and it’s just straight information. If that’s the style you’re going for, no problem, but keep your segments pretty short cause that’s gonna be a little boring if you’re talking straight for more than 5 or 6 minutes.

Now, most of what I’m saying is geared towards a newbie that doesn’t have a lot of experience podcasting or doing something similar, where you’re interacting with people to some degree. Real outgoing personalities won’t likely be doing an NPR style podcast, and you might not want to be tied down to a certain script, again, no big deal, but at least give yourself an outline. It’ll make your show sound more professional, and it’ll get your listeners the information that you want them to have because you’ve taken the time to think about what you want to say.

Let’s take a break and when we come back, I’ll review the Behringer Virtualizer Pro.

The Behringer Virtualizer Pro

Awhile back I picked up a new Behringer Virtualizer Pro model DSP2024P which is a 24-bit multi-effects engine featuring full midi control and tons of effects, in fact it’s got 71 algorithms and up to 7 adjustable parameters per algorithm, but that’s nothing more than what you can read on any site selling the thing, so what we’re here to do is see how it really performs.

First off, you can pick it up just about anywhere for about $100 and that’s a good thing because as it turns out, you might wanna get two or three of ‘em, more on that later.

That said, it’s a hundred dollars, as usual with most of Behringer’s equipment, don’t expect top quality components. The thing is built in a pretty solid case, but things like knobs and buttons have a definite ‘cheap’ feel to them. That doesn’t mean it won’t last long, but it does mean you wanna take good care of it.

Adjusting the parameters was a bit confusing at first but you’ll get the hang of it. The problem with most of these ‘all-in-one’ type devices is that most of the knobs perform double-duty or even triple-duty so you can’t always see clearly what you’re adjusting. For example, four of the adjustment knobs are labeled ‘Edit A’ ‘Edit B’ ‘Edit C’ and ‘Edit D’. Two of those are also labeled ‘Edit E’ and ‘Edit F’. You just have to know what A, B, C, D, E, and F are…or just play with it and you’ll find out.

The preset manager is pretty straight forward and sufficient, but EVERYTHING is number based. You have no clue what the effect algorithm is just by looking, you just get numbered presets. So, either find a few you like and memorize their numbers, or print out this handy PDF and lookup what you want.

Now, about buying two or three of them, something that they don’t really tell you clearly upfront is that of the 100 factory presets and 100 user presets, you can’t actually create your own ‘from scratch’ preset. So, in other words, you can’t say ‘OK, I want an expander, and an EQ, and distortion’. Nope. Only the algorithms that already exist can be edited and you can save THAT as a user preset.

So, for example, if they have a preset that has, say, Tremelo and Reverb, you can adjust the Tremelo rate and depth and the Reverb tail, and you can save that as a user preset, but you can’t add Chorus.

The unit works well as a vocal or instrument processor, and it’s got a direct box built-in so you can plug a guitar into it and go straight to your mixer. It’s got a few interesting vocal effects as well, aside from just your standard reverbs.

My take on it is that for $100 you can’t really complain too much. It’s a little bit on the noisy side, some of the effects are noisy, and the unit itself is a little louder than I’d like. I also wasn’t thrilled about not being able to choose which effects were in my patch, but like I said, you can add a second one or even a third if you had to and you’d hook them up in series, then you’d have about every effect you needed, but it would be a bear dialing it in. It is midi configurable though, which is pretty neat so if you’re pro-MIDI it can change programs for you while you play away.

‘But Ken,’ you ask ‘why are you featuring this on a podcast about podcasting? After all, this is for musicians.’ True, I say, and yet, it’s much more than that. Like I said, this thing does lots of vocal type effects including compression and gating, not to mention special effects so you can produce neat intros and even commercials. If you wanna sound different, it’ll change your pitch. If you wanna sound way out, it’ll do that. So if you’re on a budget and want more than just a compressor, this could be your ticket.

I’ll take a quick break and when I get back we’ll have this week’s pick for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Since I plan on doing this as a regular segment possibly with each episode, I figured I’d better start out with a review of a good podcast. So, this week we’ll look at a very well done how to podcast, it’s actually a videocast on using a great 3D modeling application called SketchUp.

The podcast is called The Sketchup Show and usually has one of two guests on the show, either Mike or Alex and they really know their content. They’re good at what they do and they’re also good at showing you how to do it. They actually have a site that sells their Sketchup training and this is a pretty good example of using a podcast to promote something else, which in this case is their paid training.

You watch the podcast, you find out how good their training is, and you decide to buy a DVD, it’s that simple.

Some of the things that I like about the podcast is the video quality. Bad quality video and audio is very lame. There is a hum that’s usually present in their clips, but I can overlook that since it’s not overbearing. It could be easily fixed though so if either of you gentlemen, Mike or Alex, happen to hear this podcast, drop me an email and I’ll help you out. The video quality is pretty good though, not HD, but still, it’s better than most of the stuff out there.

You can subscribe to The Sketchup Show in iTunes either by clicking the link provided here in our Enhanced podcast, or by searching for it in iTunes. You can also go to their site at www.go-2-school.com/podcasts where you can watch their training or click an iTunes subscribe link. So, whether you’re into 3D modeling and want to learn how to use Sketchup, or you just want an example of a good video podcast, take a look at The Sketchup Show.

Adios

You’ve been listening to The Podcasting Blog with Ken Walker, if you’d like to drop me an email, you can reach me at podcasting@seocompany.ca or as always, you can also post a comment on the blog. By the way, if you’ve been following along with the last few episodes, I’ve been recording in Audition and bringing my audio over to Garageband for final mixdown and adding the enhanced portions like artwork and clickable links. I’ve noticed though that the audio is real loud and borderline distortion so I’m gonna either play with that in Garageband, or do the mixdown in Audition and just add the mixed version to Garageband, we’ll see. Until next week, happy podcasting.

I’ve told you a little bit about compression in other episodes, but this time I’m gonna dedicate the whole podcast to it because honestly, it’s a little more complicated than just flipping a switch, and this is something that people tend to get confused easy. Compressors are “dynamic range processors” they’re also called “variable gain amplifiers” or VGA’s. They affect the dynamic range of sound by varying the “gain” or volume of that sound.

If you were recording a concert, there might be a potential for the loudness of that concert to peak around 120dB, and that is very loud. You’re recording equipment though, let’s say it has a range of 75 or 90dB, and if you go over that, you’re gonna get distortion. What we’ll have to do is be able to turn down the dynamic range so that we get a recording that doesn’t sound distorted. You could do it by manually turning the volume down on the mics but the problem with that is, you’re too slow and by the time you lower the volume, you’ve already over-modulated and recorded, junk. So first, the compressor does the job for us automatically.

In the music world compressors are used on just about anything that has a fluctuating volume, things like guitars, drums, vocals. A simple explanation is that a compressor will make a big change in volume into a little change in volume, so it kinda balances things out.

Most compressors have 4 main controls and they usually have two secondary controls. The main controls are Input Level, Output Level, Threshold, and Ratio. The secondary controls are important for things like voice work or even if you’ve got a noisy guitar amp, and these controls are Attack Time and Release Time.

The Input level is simply how much gain should be applied to the input signal. For example, if you set it to ‘0’, that means you’re getting the exact same volume level that you are sending it. If you set it to -3dB, then you’re reducing the gain of the input signal by 3dB. If you set it to +3dB, then you’re turning the input signal up by 3dB.

The Output level is on the other end of the compressor. The input level is the first adjustment, and the output level is the last adjustment. Once everything has been compressed, you’re setting how much amplification, or reduction, should happen to the signal. So this is another place for you to control the volume into the next piece of equipment which could be a mixer, a PA, or a recording device.

Usually, we don’t want the compressor running all the time. This is where the Threshold comes in. Think of this like the thermostat for your air conditioner. You set it at a certain level and if it gets hot enough, the air conditioner kicks on. Once the temperature gets cool enough, the air conditioner kicks off. Well, the threshold behaves pretty much the same way. You set a volume level where you want the compressor to start working. Any signals that are below that level, won’t be processed. Once a signal reaches that level, the compressor starts to do its work, based on the next parameter, the Ratio.

The Ratio is probably the trickest part of compression. This is the relationship between the uncompressed signal, and the compressed signal, and it’s described as a ratio. The reason it’s a ratio is because it’s dynamic. There’s not just a ‘set’ level of amplification that occurs. If the ratio was 4:1, then an input signal of 20dB would have an output signal of 5dB. You can figure that out by just taking the input level and divide it by the ratio, so 20 divided by 4 is 5. If your ratio was less, like 2:1, then your 20dB signal would turn into a 10dB signal. A real high ratio, meaning a lot of compression is going on, like 10:1, would take your 20dB signal and make it a 2dB signal. So ratios from 2 to 6 are considered ‘gentle’ meaning they’re more subtle, but over 6 would be considered ‘hard’ and is usually pretty noticeable. For studio and podcasting work, you want to stick with the more gentle side of compression. Start with a 2:1 ratio and see how that sounds.

Another parameter we can set is the Attack Time. This is a number, usually expressed in milliseconds, that tells us how quick the compressor will start to compress a signal that has gone over the threshold. So if it’s set to 200ms, a signal will go above the threshold for 200ms before it gets compressed. The reason for this is to help things sound a bit more natural. You don’t want everything sounding like it’s hitting a brick wall, acoustically. So the attack time is used to flow the compression in.

Let’s say that you start talking and then you stop. The compressor’s gonna stop too because your signal will go below the threshold. If you stop just for a split second and then start talking again, that’s gonna sound a bit strange because your volume will jump around suddenly a bit. So to compliment the attack time, we have the release time. This is also set in milliseconds and it determines the amount of time for the compressor to turn off after the signal drops below the threshold.

There are a couple of other features that I should mention just in case you’re looking to buy a new compressor, first, you can get processors that include other effects AND a compressor, so that’s one option. You can also get dedicated compressors. As a general rule, you’ll get better quality with a dedicated compressor. Second, you can get stereo or mono compressors. That just tells you how many independent signals can be run through the compressor. A stereo compressor lets you run two signals, independently, so you could run two mics through it. A mono compressor just lets you run one signal through it.

A feature that is built in to a lot of compressors is a De-esser. This is a selective compressor, it compresses signals in a given frequency, around 5-8k. It does that to soften ‘S’ sounds so they’re not as harsh. It’s usually a subtle compression, so it’s not something that most people will notice a whole lot.

Aside from that, you’ve two main categories of compressors, tube and solid-state. Without going into engineering terms, I’ll just say that tube compressors generally have a much warmer sound and a lot of times they’re used just because of that, they kinda add a presence to the sound. Solid-state isn’t all that bad, it kinda depends on personal tastes.

With compressors, you WILL get what you pay for. The more expensive models can do a lot of compressing and leave the signal still sounding natural, while the cheaper models will sound compressed the more you compress. Prices vary drastically from a couple of hundred dollars to thousands, so see if you can go to a music store and try one out. You’ll wanna hear how it sounds with strictly voice going through it.

I’m gonna go ahead and give you three different models to look at in three different price ranges, just so you can get an idea of what’s out there. For podcasting, as always, don’t spend a ton of money, but get the best you can afford. Compression won’t make or break your podcast, but it will help your sound quite a bit.

Compressor #1
Compressor #2
Compressor #3

These are all from Musician’s Friend, with which I have no affiliation, but they generally have a good price.

Before we mix everything down, we just wanna do a little bit of processing on that voice track. Hopefully your audio levels are somewhere around -6 to -3dB. That’s a pretty good place to be because when you’re recording, you need to have a little bit of headroom. Headroom is the amount of ‘cushion’ that you have between your loudest sound and 0dB, which in the case of digital recording would mean distortion.

When your signal goes over 0dB, it’s gonna sound terrible, so you wanna keep it at or below 0dB. To do that safely though, it’s a good idea to shoot for something like -3dB and then if you need to, you can amplify it a bit, or better yet, you can apply some compression, which is what we’re gonna do today.

Some of what I’m gonna tell you is kinda dependant on you specific situation, and a lot of people that give advice like this don’t give specifics for that very reason, but I think I can give you some real numbers and just tell you where you can play with it.

Let’s talk just a little bit of theory for a minute. The reason you want your signal in the -6 to -3dB range has to do with what is called the signal-to-noise ratio. When nobody is talking into your mic, and there’s nothing special going on, that’s your noise level. Try recording without anything going on and you’ll see a level of noise.

You want your talking voice to be a lot louder than that noise level because any amplification or compression that we do, is going to affect that noise. Here’s what I mean. If your noise level is around -30db and when you talk it reads about -20db, that means your signal to noise ratio is 10dB, which isn’t very good. If you amplify your signal, the noise is gonna get amplified as well.

On the other hand, if your noise level is around -50 and when you talk you register -6, that’s a difference of 44dB, much better. Now when you amplify your voice, it’s mostly voice that gets amplified.

So you’re gonna try to record your voice at between -6 and -3dB. If you go under a bit, or over a bit, no big deal, as long as you don’t go over 0dB, which is called clipping. If you actually do that, you’ll know why it’s called clipping, your signal actually gets clipped.

Instead of doing a straight amplification, we’re gonna use a compressor that comes with Audition. Before we do that though, let’s get rid of as much noise as we can from the source signal.

In an earlier podcast we used the Noise Reduction effect and now we’re gonna do the same thing. If you’ve got your session open, double-click it so that you’re in Edit View. Find a segment of silence and hit F9. Highlight the noise. Right-click it and capture the noise reduction profile. Then select the entire file and click Effects, Noise Reduction, and then Noise Reduction.

If you want you can play with the settings later, for now just take the defaults. This filter is gonna go through the whole file and filters out the sounds of the noise. Now it can’t take out everything, but it’ll usually give you something workable.

Go ahead and play your file now and see how it sounds. It should be a lot quieter. Also listen for digital artifacts which sometimes pop up if you applied the filter too strongly. It’ll make your voice sound very digitized.

Now with the entire file still selected, click Effects, Amplitude, and then Dynamics Processing. Without going into too much theory here, I’m just gonna give you the settings I typically use for a podcast voice track, and again, you can play with it if you want to. I’ll probably dedicate a whole post to how compression works later on, for now, make sure you have the Traditional tab selected, that way you can punch in some numbers. There’s a picture on my post that shows you all the settings. Just make them match.

Click on the Attack/Release tab and take a look at the next picture. Basically, you want a quick attack time and a fairly quick release. Here’s why. When you start talking, you want the compressor to kick in right away. When you stop though, you might start again quickly, so you give yourself just a little bit of time, a split second. If you don’t start talking within that 50 milliseconds, then the compressor is gonna shut the gate. Again, I don’t wanna get too detailed about this just yet, so we’ll leave it at that for now.

If you want, you can save your settings as a preset so you can pull them up later. I’m also gonna show you how you can apply this effect without actually changing your file, but that comes later.

So click OK and your audio is gonna get leveled out. This helps quiet passages sound louder, and louder passages sound a little quieter. It also helps your noise levels go way down when nobody’s talking.

We’ve got one more thing to do before your podcast is ready and that’s a little EQing. With the whole file still selected, click Effects, Filters, and Graphic Equalizer. Now this part, I can only give you a little advice. Everybody’s voice is different. If you’re a woman you’ll do this differently than if you’re a man.

For a male voice, go ahead and give yourself a little bit of bass, not too much though. Don’t make yourself sound fake. Also add some subtle highs and a little bit in the 1 to 2k range. I’ll post a picture of my EQ settings so you can get an idea of where to start. Use the preview button to hear what your voice sounds like with the EQ applied. Audition has a preset called 30-band Punch and Sparkle and that’s a good place to start. Also, if you’re using a real Graphic Equalizer you can kinda make it match these settings and then you don’t have to do it with software. If you’re using a Sonic Maximizer, chances are you won’t need to do any of this EQ stuff at all.

So click OK and now we have a processed voice file. Listen to the voice all by itself and see what you think. If you use the Preview buttons then you can tweak the sounds before applying them. In another podcast I’m gonna show you how you can use the Effects bus to apply these effects without having to actually change your source file, which is an excellent feature.

Now go back to multitrack view and click File then Export and then Audio. Save your mixed down file as an MP3 and you’ll want to look at the MP3 options and try one of the presets, like maybe 128k. I don’t recommend that you go much lower than that because you wanna have a good quality broadcast and it’ll start to get noisy below about 96k.

Give your newly created MP3 a listen. I always recommend that you listen to the whole thing once it’s mixed down, just to make sure you didn’t make a mistake somewhere. At this point you should have a good sounding MP3 and we’re ready to talk about some hosting and platform options.

This is actually a very fun topic. If you’re a musician like me, you love audio toys and that’s what we’re gonna talk about today.

For the podcaster, this category is not essential. So keep that in mind as you absorb this information, none of this is mandatory, however it will separate the men from the boys, so to speak. Audio processing at this level or I should say at this phase, means sculpting your audio signal before it gets to the computer. You’re gonna enhance the audio before it gets recorded. The benefits of this would be not having to take the time to apply the same effects every time you produce your podcast. You can also get some truly amazing sound with processing hardware. Let’s look at just some of the main types of processors and I’ll give you a brief rundown of what they’re used for.

Compression

Compressors are used to help you not saturate your recording and over modulate it. Over modulation is distortion. It means that your signal won’t sound clear and clean. For voice, you always want clear and clean. Compressors also help your signal to be more balanced, so that the difference between quiet passages and loud passages won’t be as drastic. With a good quality compressor you can turn the volume up so that quite sounds are still heard, but then louder sounds will be compressed or squashed down and that keeps them more on an even level. Radio stations, and I’m talking AM and FM, generally run through a compressor, they run everything through it from the DJ’s mic, to the music so that you hear everything and you don’t get blasted all of a sudden with a loud song. Another thing that most compressors have is a limiter, and that basically just insures that no matter what, the audio level does not go above a certain point. That’s mostly useful in a live PA setting, but a compressor is a good thing for a podcaster.

EQ

Equalization is our next topic. Since we’re talking chiefly about your voice, this isn’t as tricky as it would be for live sound. You have two options and I’m gonna feature both of them in this same segment. Traditional EQ would be the first option and it involves getting something like a 31-band EQ and tweaking different frequencies to get the sound that you want. You don’t want to over do this though because if you do it will sound fake. For example, don’t try to give yourself an extremely strong bassy voice. On the other hand, if you have a very rich, deep voice, you can accentuate it. Don’t forget to add a bit to the high end and give it some crispiness though. While I’m not gonna be able to show you how one of these units works, I will be showing you how to do it with software and they function essentially the same way.
The second EQ option would be to use something like a Sonic Maximizer, they’re also called Aural Exciters. This is a really nice tool for people who don’t want to fuss with setting all those frequencies manually. Basically, a sonic maximizer analyzes the frequencies that are present in a signal and you tell it what you want to accentuate, usually by just turning a dial. You can give it more punch or more crispness. The sonic maximizer takes the guess work out of it all and gives you a strong, intelligible signal that sounds great. It’s kinda like the loudness button on a stereo, it gives you a tighter low-end and a crisper high-end. If you’re gonna go with a mixer, than definitely consider a sonic maximizer. Besides, it’s something else that has lots of lights on it and it’ll make you look a lot more impressive when you show your friends your studio.
A good quality dual 31-band EQ is gonna be between $150 and $300, while a sonic maximizer is gonna run about the same, $100 to $300. BBE is probably the biggest name in the industry but Behringer is another. Behringer seems to give you fairly decent equipment for a little less than most other manufacturers.

Preamps

One thing that I almost forgot to mention, and it’s actually a pretty important one, is preamps. A preamp is the first thing you plug your mic into. Preamps affect your tone. They have a strong influence on how you sound, tone wise. Again, this is not crucial to your podcast, you can do without any of this stuff, I just wanted to make this fairly comprehensive and make you aware of your options. If you listen to a signal that is processed through a high quality preamp, and one that is not, you will hear the difference. A decent preamp’s gonna be about $300 and they go up to well over $1,000 so again, don’t rush out and buy one but keep it in the back of your mind for when you want to take another step up.

For now, that’s all I’m gonna cover, there are other signal processors out there but those are mostly for live situations or for singing.