89: How to Get Good Sound for Your Podcast, Part 1: Why It Matters

I've been obsessed with things that sound good for as long as I could remember. I've always loved music and the effect it has on my body and brain, so I got interested in the process of creating and capturing sound when I was young. The first podcasts I started listening to back in 2008/2009 were professionally produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered by folks who had been working in radio for a long time. So they sounded really good. Then I started listening to some shows produced by normal folks, what you'd call independent podcasters. I liked the content just as much, but I noticed that the sound quality was usually a lot lower, and sometimes so bad it made me stop listening to the show. So I started wondering, can you make a podcast that sounds good even if you don't have a lot of money to spend? Is it possible? I figured out that there were a few key things that made a big difference. So I'm going to make a series of episodes where I share what I've learned about audio recording and sound quality, and how to make a podcast that sounds good. Q: Does it really matter how good you sound? Yes! The quality of an audio recording affects how trustworthy and credible listeners think you are. As a podcast host, you want people to be able to hear you clearly and understand you. If they have a hard time hearing and understanding you, they're not going to stick around for very long. The same goes for any co-hosts or guests you have on your show as well. There's a research article by Eryn Newman and Norbert Shwartz from the University of Southern California published in 2018 that demonstrates the importance of good sound quality. The articles references a study in which two groups of people were shown a video of a scientific talk and asked to rate the credibility and trustworthiness of the presenters. The first group got a version of the video with high quality audio. The second group got a version of the video with low quality audio. When the video was difficult to hear, viewers thought the talk was worse, the speaker less intelligent and less likeable and the research less important. “As soon as we reduced the audio quality, all of a sudden, the scientists and their research lost credibility.” - Eryn Newman The quality of audio influences whether you believe what you hear - news.usc.edu It's important to learn how to record and publish audio that sounds good. Q: When you say something sounds good, what does that mean? I use to talk a lot about sounding good, but I never really broke it down in a way that was easy to understand. I know because I got a 2 star review in Apple Podcasts last year from Red84604. Red wrote: I can appreciate that the podcast dude is a musician. So am I. But his obsession with audio quality made me look for another podcast to reach me how to podcast. Even if I came to this podcast exclusively for advice about audio, it wouldn’t be useful for that because, from the very beginning, his advice assumes that the listener already knows a whole lot about the subject (more than I know and I actually was a professional musician for a while). I couldn’t follow it. And he went on for episode after episode. I want to produce a podcast with great audio. But even after listening to several episodes I am still not sure how to do that because his advice was so technical. And his snobbery on the topic was off-putting. Sorry. That's fair criticism. So really, you can thank Red for this whole 7 part series I'm about to make and share with you. When I say a podcast sounds good, it means each voice that you hear in the episode is clear and easy to understand, and not difficult to listen to because of distracting background noise or other factors that make it hard to hear and understand someone who is speaking. Let's break that down even further. Clear and easy to understand means: * You've got a microphone that works well for recording a human voice, and you're relatively close to that microphone when you're speaking. * Your voice doesn't sound muffled, or far away, or distorted in any way. * The volume level of your recording is loud enough, but not too loud. * That volume level doesn't change dramatically during the recording. It's consistent, or gets louder when you get speak louder, and quieter when you speak quieter. * Your audio recording is free of distracting background noise (hums, buzzes, pops, beeps, echos, reverb that makes it hard to understand you, etc). * The volume level of your voice is roughly the same as the other voices in the recording (if there are other voices). There's other things that can enhance the quality and impact of an episode, like sound design, music, pacing, and so on, but I want to stay focused on the basics for now. Q: So how do you get this good sound quality? I believe there are 7 important things to know and keep in mind when recording audio if you want your show to sound good. I'll be covering each one in detail over the coming episodes, but this week, I want to talk ab