In addition to capturing their voice (kind of faintly), I got a lot of room noise and ambience. Had I known better, I should have held one of the mics and had my guest do the same, or at the very least put them on a table directly in front of them. Recording Liveįor live recordings, I would plug both of my Sony mics into the iRiver using a headphone splitter.
This became a big problem for me early on. One downside to using Levelator is it will bring out any background noise in a recording as well. I would then import my dialogue into Audacity, where I would mix it with my intro and outro music. It works on solo dialogue as well, and I got in the habit of using it on most audio.
This software uses an algorithm to basically make all the voices on a podcast sound the same volume. I would then use Levelator to balance everything out.
Starting OutĪs I was getting ready to launch in 2006, I spent a lot of time researching what podcasters were using for their shows. All the times I slapped my head in frustration at my missteps. This is all the stuff that I have struggled with behind the scenes over the years. I would make the best product I could and then just present it without and excuses or “aw shucks” commentary. Nothing drives me crazy more than listening to a podcast and hearing the host immediately start apologizing. On both the blog and the podcast, I’ve always taken the stance of making things as good as I can and then putting them out in the world without any apologies.