Podcasting can be broken down into three stages.
- What you have to say
- How you say it
- How you present that to audiences
Each of those stages require practice, thought, and care to get right. Each stage entails multiple aspects as well. What you have to say includes the type of podcast you want to host, topic, length, guests, format, and more. How you present your podcast includes promotion, the introductions/outros, video, whether you have music, among other things.
How you say what you want to say is a matter of technique. That entails interviewing technique if you have guests, or conversational techniques if you are speaking alone or with a co-host or two. It also entails recording technique, which is what we’re focused on here.
The great thing about podcasting is it’s open, and it’s accessible to many more people than traditional radio or audio broadcasting. But, listeners are still used to clear, high quality audio. It’s easy to lose someone’s attention or to have them stop listening because the sound is distracting or uneven. If the sound obscures what you’re trying to say, in other words, you’re going to lose your audience. And while there are things that can be done after the fact to clean up the sound, your recording technique is going to make the biggest difference in the quality of your recording.
Here are a few common recording mistakes I’ve heard or made over the years, and ways to fix them.
Touching the mic or nearby surfaces while talking: I use a Blue Yeti mic for podcasting, and I recommend it to others. It produces a high-quality sound. It is, however, very sensitive. That means touching your desk or the mic or even the mic cord will show up on the recording as a little rumbling sound. And if you do so while talking, it’s very difficult to take that out of the podcast.
The first thing you can do to prevent this is be very conscious of your hands and position, especially when you’re talking. Focus on speaking without your hands, and also make sure you don’t speak so close to the mic that you touch it!
I also bought a mic arm, which means the mic now sits in front of my face and not on the desk, so if I forget to stay away and touch the desk, the reverberations don’t bleed onto the recording. And as a last piece, not pictured below, I bought a shock mount, which further blocks the reverberations from getting on the recording.
Bad connection: This is relevant if you’re recording remotely. As much as having the right mic, the right software, and the right techniques in the room matter, your internet connection is going to make or break a remote recording with someone else. And their connection will too!
Before recording, make sure you have a good connection – use a speedtest for example to check that you’re at normal capacity. If you can record closer to your router, do so. If you have a lot of internet usage in your house or office to the point where it eats at bandwidth, see if you can schedule your recording for a time when usage is low (or ask others to tone down their usage while you record).
It’s more important that the host sounds good, as they set the baseline for the podcast, but you should check with your guest or co-host to make sure they have a similarly clear recording set-up.
This is also where selecting the right recording software counts, which we’ll address in a separate post.
Noisy background: You may not be trying to produce a professional podcast. You could argue the authenticity of the recording even helps. And in 2020, we’ve all gotten used to family members, pets, or other ambient disruptions to our work meetings as home and work meld together.
It is still distracting, though, to listen to a podcast and hear a background conversation or noise when someone is talking. And if that’s happening on your end while you are talking, it’s very difficult to edit it out of the sound.
A lot of people record in closets or small closed spaces where they can block out external noise. That’s fine if you have it available. Beyond that, take steps to talk to your household or to otherwise create a recording space that is quiet and as pristine as possible. For example, consider drawing the blinds or the shutters on your windows, or putting pillows up, to block out external noise.
Inconsistent Mic Distance: The microphones we recommend are stationary. You set them on your desk or recording space and leave them alone, especially to avoid the issues I mentioned above with touching the mic.
That also means that you should try to be consistent in your recording stance and posture. A consistent position will ensure that the recording volume is also consistent, with fluctuations only when you naturally change your volume level.
Experiment before recording to see how you sound, by reading or speaking for 10-15 seconds, long enough for you to have to take a breath. If you’re too close to the mic, your breathing will register loudly – and some podcasts leave these in, but it’s something of an aesthetic choice. If you’re too far away, you’ll find that your normal volume is weak. And you need to be comfortable where you are sitting, because you’ll need to stay in or around that position while recording. Otherwise, the editing process becomes much more difficult as you have to balance out the different levels that come from your own end, let alone balancing with your guest.
Mouse Clicks: This is an obvious issue, but still a regular one. If you are recording on a computer via an online call, you may have reason to click around. And if you’re having an interesting conversation, you may want to look things up while recording.
All that’s fine, but do try to be conscientious about when you click with your mouse, because it can be super distracting to listeners. I try to only click when my co-host or guest is talking, so that I can edit it out of my track later, or to hold the mouse down and away from my body, so that the click at least is quieter.
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The way things should work is that your podcast covers an interesting topic, and you have a great guest or co-host, and your listeners judge you only by the quality of your conversation. But that’s not how things actually work – in my experience, a vast majority of negative podcast reviews revolve around the sound quality.
Some of those can be attributed to other issues, whether with the voices themselves or the editing, but a lot of them start with how you record your podcast. And while someone like Shortman Studios can help you with the editing or your vocal techniques, you need to make sure you avoid these mistakes to get the most pristine sound available to you.