September 22, 2025 • 22 mins
We explore how Buzzsprout's Magic Mastering feature helps podcasters achieve professional-quality audio without technical expertise! In this episode, Cara and Kevin go through the details and give examples of Magic Mastering's Filler Killer and Power Clean capabilities!
If you have questions about using Magic Mastering, email us at support@buzzsprout.com.
Have a topic or question we should address on a future episode? Text us or email the Buzzsprout Podcaster Success Team at support@buzzsprout.com
Keep podcasting!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Podcasting Q&A brought to you by the
people at Buzzsprout.
I'm your host, cara Passetti,and I'm bringing you the best
tips and strategies to keep youpodcasting with confidence.
With me today is Buzzsproutco-founder and tried and true
podcaster, kevin Finn.
He's a true expert when itcomes to audio, so I am very
(00:21):
excited to tackle this questiontogether.
Thanks, kevin, for being here.
So I am very excited to tacklethis question together.
Thanks, kevin for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi, I'm excited to be here, tried and true podcaster.
Okay, I will do my best to liveup to these high expectations.
Thank you for the nice welcome.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
So today we're actually going to be talking
about magic mastering.
We see questions all the timein the support inbox from
podcasters that they're justasking how to make their audio
sound better.
So whether they're new andthey're just getting started and
they don't know thosetechniques, or they are a
seasoned podcaster with plentyof episodes under their belt but
they just want to take theiraudio to that next level.
(00:58):
So when we see that in thesupport inbox, our common
response is magic mastering.
In the support inbox, ourcommon response is Magic
Mastering.
It's a tool that we offer hereat Buzzsprout and it's commonly
referred to as the Instagramfilter for your audio.
As an Instagram user and afilter user, I am very thankful
for that.
It really cleans up my imagesand so Magic Mastering can do
(01:19):
that for your audio.
So I just want to firstintroduce Magic Mastering for
listeners who may have no ideawhat we're talking about.
Magic Mastering is an automatedfeature that we offer that
provides quality automation.
So it does this through threeparts smart, adaptive leveling,
perfect loudness and true peaktargeting and audio sweetening.
(01:40):
So, kevin, can you dive intothose three parts and let us
know kind of the technical partbehind it and why Magic
Mastering makes your podcastproduction process so much more
efficient.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Sure.
So let me start out by saying alot of people have maybe it's a
slight misunderstanding thatMagic Mastering is a tool for
amateur podcasters, and it'sreally not like I don't think
that's the best way to look atit Like.
So we do buzzcast weekly.
Jordan Alvin and I are on thatshow every week.
(02:12):
All of us have been podcastingfor years and years and years.
I think we just did an episodea couple weeks ago where we said
like the combined podcastingexperience between all of us is
over 30 years of combinedexperience of podcasting.
So none of us would probablyconsider ourselves amateur
podcasters, but we still usethis tool because in one way,
(02:32):
it's very much like an insurancepolicy.
So, even though Jordan is anexpert podcast producer she's an
excellent editor and she knowsexactly every step that you
should do to get your audioperfect and published there's a
possibility that she could makea slight mistake, like we're all
humans, right.
Well, computer programs, on theother hand, just do the same
thing every time, so they veryrarely would make a mistake.
(02:55):
They're not going to skip astep.
They don't know how to skip astep, they only know how to
follow instructions.
And so we run magic masteringnumber one as an insurance
policy.
So, just in case Jordanexported the file and she chose
the wrong format or her settingsgot messed up somehow or
something, is an insurancepolicy on the end to make sure
that everything goes outperfectly?
The other reason that we use itis that it's a massive time
(03:15):
saver, and correcting audiolevels is not something.
It's not a good use ofsomebody's time, and so magic
mastering is a huge time saver.
Now let me dive into those threethings that you asked for.
Number one smart adaptiveleveling.
What is that?
The easiest way to think aboutthat is that when you have
multiple people on a recording,or even one person, and you have
sound effects or something likethat, you want all those sounds
(03:37):
to be consistent, right?
So this wouldn't be a very goodepisode for you to listen to If
every time I started talking, Iwas super loud and boomy and
then Kara started talking andshe was softer.
Like think about if you weretrying to listen to that while
you're driving down the road,you constantly be adjusting the
volume, so be like oh, kara'stalking, now I need to turn her
up a little bit.
I know Kevin's talking now.
It's too loud, I got to turnthat down.
So we want consistency betweenall the voices and the sounds
(04:00):
that you hear in one audiorecording, and so it will do
that for you without you havingto do any work.
Number two perfect loudness andtrue peak targeting.
This comes from the Applepodcast recommendations for how
loud voices should be in theaudio file that you upload to
distribute as a podcast.
Now, why Apple?
(04:21):
Well, because Apple is kind ofthe first really big mover in
the podcasting space.
They brought podcasting to theiPod years and years and years
ago and that sort of kicked offthe popularity of what podcasts
are today.
So Apple back then came up withsome standards and everyone's
just sort of followed them fromthat point forward.
So that is the standard inpodcasting.
And now I'm going to hit youwith some technical stuff.
That is not going to make senseto a lot of people, and that's
(04:43):
totally fine.
But they recommend that theoverall loudness remain at
negative 16 decibels, with aplus or minus one dB tolerance
and a true peak value thatdoesn't exceed negative one dB.
If you don't know what thatmeans, like me, I don't really
know what that means, but Idon't have to, because Magic
Mastering does know what thatmeans and it will match those
(05:05):
specs perfectly for the filethat you run through it.
And the third thing that itdoes is audio sweetening, and so
that's filtering out noises,hiss and hums and stuff like
that.
And so every now and then you'llget some noise into a recording
that you don't want.
That's not a part of it.
You could have an airconditioner running that your
microphone is picking up.
You could have a fan in yourroom.
You could have a lawnmower thatdrives by unexpectedly outside
(05:27):
your window while you'rerecording.
You don't want that in thefinal edit and those things can
be hard to get out.
Sometimes magic mastering isreally good at getting out like
consistent noises.
This is in the default setting.
So if you have that airconditioner and it's humming the
entire time that you'rerecording, it will pull that out
, no problem.
Every now and then, like I said,you might have something weird
(05:47):
like the lawnmower that comes by, or you're recording in a
particularly noisy space.
You might be outside at a parkinterviewing somebody and
there's a lot of wind noise orbackground noise.
You might be recording at apodcast conference and so
there's people all over theplace and you're like it's
actually too much all over theplace and you're like it's
actually too much, it's hard tohear the voices.
How do I clean that up a littlebit?
You might be recording in aroom that doesn't have a lot of
sound treatment, so there's somereverb in the room which is
(06:08):
sort of that weird hollow echoeysound.
So there's this other featurethat we'll dig into in a little
bit, called power clean, andthat can reduce and eliminate
some of those noises that arereally hard to get out of
because they're inconsistent.
So those are the three thingssmart adaptive leveling, perfect
loudness and true peaktargeting and audio sweetening.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Awesome, thank you.
Those terms sound so simplewhen we just lay them out on
paper.
And then you go in the behindthe scenes and you're throwing
out words like true, peak andnegative decibel levels, and it
can get a little overwhelmingand, as any podcaster knows,
it's not typical that you canjust record something, throw it
out there and it soundsexcellent.
(06:48):
So this is a helpful tool toease the efficiency of all the
other things that you have to do, so you can focus on content
creation.
What is it that you're saying?
You know, let us handle thispart on having your audio at the
levels it needs to be and sothat, ultimately, your listener
wants to keep coming back andhearing your podcast.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Right, and that's really why I love that line that
says it's an Instagram filterfor your audio, because
oftentimes people are prettygood at taking photographs right
, especially with the phones andstuff and how good the cameras
are on the phones.
A lot of people have gottenreally good at taking really
good photographs, but do theyneed to know everything, like,
do they need to then invest inPhotoshop and know how to do
(07:29):
color grading and know how toadjust the levels and the
brightness and the contrast andsaturation and all that kind of
stuff?
No, not for the most part.
No.
To get a good photo that youwant to post on your social or
share with your family, youdon't.
You just want to go in andclick on a different filter or
click on the little magic wandand have it just brighten it up
a little bit, and that is thesame thing that we're trying to
(07:49):
do with.
Magic mastering is that you cancreate great content, but there
could be some little audioartifacts in there that just,
for whatever reason, doesn'tsound exactly right.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Since we're not talking about photos and we're
talking about podcasting.
Most podcasts are typicallysomeone speaking.
It is not a theatricalperformance with music, and it's
mostly spoken word, maybebetween one host or multiple
hosts.
That is the typical podcastthat we hear, and so when you're
(08:16):
uploading a spoken word podcastat Buzzsprout, we recommend you
use a monophile, meaning onechannel.
And so, kevin, can you tell usthe difference between a
monophile and a stereophile, andis there a time that it's
appropriate to use a stereophilewhen creating a spoken word
podcast?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
So if you think about, well,I'm going to try to give you
visual examples as much aspossible.
Like you said, a monofile isexactly what it sounds like.
It is one audio channel, and ifyou are a podcast person who's
speaking into a microphone,there's one voice going into one
microphone and so you only needone channel.
(08:55):
Now you would be like but allthe music I listen to is stereo
and it comes out of my devicecalled a stereo.
What is stereo?
Stereo is two or more channels,but typically it's just two,
and you usually have a left anda right speaker.
Now, once you get to the pointwhere you want something
different coming out of eachspeaker, then at a minimum you
need two channels, right.
(09:16):
So you need a left channel anda right channel.
Again, we're just speaking ingeneral terms here, because
maybe you're playing some musicand you want more drums out of
the left side, and there aresome amazing things that music
producers can do when they goeven beyond two channels to use
the subwoofers and all that kindof stuff to make the music
really sound like you're in aconcert hall.
In podcasting we don't do allthat.
(09:37):
We don't have all thoseluxuries.
Usually it's just one personspeaking into one microphone,
another person speaking intoanother microphone.
So when would stereo be abenefit for a podcaster?
Well, there's this really coolgenre in podcasting called audio
drama, and oftentimes you havepeople who aren't just having a
conversation, they're actuallytrying to act out a scene, but
it's just through audio, and soyou might want to make it sound
(10:01):
like somebody is, you know,coming into the room and
entering from the right side andthen they're moving to the
center of the room and if you dothat really well, you can
actually hear that in yourheadphones.
Like it would sound likethey're more on the right and
then they walk over and nowthey're more on the left, and
that's called like audio panningand stuff.
And so some of the people whodo like audio dramas just one
example would take advantage ofthe stereo capabilities if they
(10:23):
had it available to them.
But most podcasters, most of thetime I don't want to lose this
point Most of the podcasters,most of the time you just want
to do a monofile.
Why?
Why not use stereo anyway?
Well, because it doubles thesize of the file and anybody
who's listening to your podcasthas to download that file, and
so downloading takes time.
The bigger the file, the longerit's going to take to download.
(10:43):
So I don't know if you've everhad this experience, kara, but I
do this all the time.
My podcasts are not set to autodownload to my phone.
I just use the default settingson my podcast app, which means
when I'm sitting in an airplanegetting ready to take off, I am
scrambling, trying to queue upepisodes so that I don't have to
pay the $16 for Wi-Fi on theflight to listen to podcasts.
So I'm scrambling and I'm likedownload, download, download,
(11:04):
download, and I'm watching thelittle progress meters go as
we're shooting down the runwayat 150 miles an hour getting
ready to lift off and I'm likeI've got 30 seconds of Wi-Fi
left before I've got to payDelta's 20 bucks.
So the smaller the audio fileis better, smaller audio file is
better and you're not going tolose any audio quality.
You're literally just sayingjust give me one channel instead
(11:25):
of two channels.
Why double the amount of dataif the same thing is still going
to come out of both sides of myheadphones?
Speaker 1 (11:31):
That's such a key point that you make.
Yeah, you're not going to losethe audio quality.
Save your listeners some time.
Save them the $20 Wi-Fi fee,that's right.
Save them the $20 Wi-Fi fee andget your audio to them.
Yeah, we do get this questionin the support inbox and we
don't want to take away frompodcasters who are creating
audio drama or are creatingpodcasts where they're
incorporating music and takingthat time.
(11:53):
We want to provide a way foryou to add that stereo file to
Buzzsprout.
So that's another benefit ofmagic mastering.
A lot of podcasters use MagicMastering to enhance their audio
, but if you are recording yourpodcast and you want to upload a
stereo file, you can do thatthrough Magic Mastering.
You can switch Magic Masteringfrom talk to music and then you
(12:15):
would be able to upload yourstereo files to Buzzsprout and
we can get them across to thedirectory.
So that is an option.
It's just through MagicMastering.
So thank you for clarifyingthat, kevin.
That helps a lot.
Yeah, all right.
So Kevin, in the beginning ofthis episode, kind of gave away
our grand finale.
Recently, magic Mastering hashad a couple of changes, so
(12:39):
Magic Mastering has been on thescene since 2021.
It is widely used by many ofour podcasters, who host their
podcasts here with us, but wegave it a little upgrade this
year, and so, kevin, since youare the one who gave one of
these features their name, Iwant you to introduce these last
two features, and I know you'reexcited to talk about them.
(13:01):
I'm excited, and so let us knowwhat they are and why we should
be so excited to use them.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Okay, so there are two features, and one is called
Power Clean, the other is calledFiller Killer.
So let's talk about power cleanfirst.
One of our base mantras withmagic mastering is sort of this
do no harm mentality.
Whatever you upload, we want todo the best that we can to make
it sound better, but never atthe cost or risk of making it
sound worse.
(13:27):
Right, okay, so everything thatwe do, we take a very gentle
approach to it.
Specifically when we're talkingabout like our noise reduction
features, they're very gentleand, like I said, if you have
like a consistent backgroundnoise like an air conditioner is
the most common example that werun into it's very good at
removing that because it'sconsistent throughout the entire
(13:47):
audio recording, and so thesoftware can easily identify
that consistent hum and it canremove it without messing
anything up Every now and then.
The gentle clean is not theright approach because and so
the software can easily identifythat consistent hum and it can
remove it without messinganything up Every now and then.
The gentle clean is not theright approach because you might
have an episode that wasrecorded in a particularly noisy
environment.
Another common thing thathappens all the time is that you
might have guests on yourpodcast and you're looking at
them on a screen share videoscreen and it looks like they
(14:10):
have a microphone in front oftheir face, but they actually
have the wrong microphoneselected, like in their
configuration.
So they're actually using theirlaptop microphone, even though
you're looking at a veryexpensive microphone sitting in
front of their face and you'relike, why doesn't that sound
very good?
Anyway, you don't want tooffend your guests, so you just
push through and now you havethis really rough audio
recording and it might have alot of reverb or something.
In cases like that, in specialcases, we have rolled out this
(14:35):
feature called power clean soyou can't turn it on to default
run on all your episodes becauseit's too aggressive, like it
does have the potential that itcould do some harm, but, like,
for example, in buzzcast, we endall of our episodes with this
little um hang up sound.
It's like a boop and it's likejust kind of, because we do post
shows sometimes.
Well, when we, when we've runpower clean on our episodes, it
cuts that out.
(14:55):
Oh, wow, it completely removesit.
And why?
Well, because we have anaggressive algorithm that's
saying there's this is atroubled recording and it's got
weird noises in it and we needyou to take those weird noises
out.
Okay, so that's what I when Isay like, do no harm, it's not
going to make your voice soundterrible, but it might cut out
some stuff that you didn't wantcut out.
But we would take that hit ifwe were recording in a live
(15:17):
podcast conference and there wasall this background noise and
you couldn't hear the episode.
Otherwise, it will save thatepisode, but it will also cut
out our ending noise.
So it's a good trade-off inextreme examples, and so that is
a feature that we're superexcited about.
We hope it's going to save alot of recordings where people
think there's nothing I can dowith this.
Hey, run it through PowerClean.
There's a good chance that itcan fix it up and save your
(15:37):
episode.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Absolutely, and if a podcaster sees an opportunity to
record with a guest, maybe it'sa once in a lifetime, maybe
it's like you said you're at apodcast conference and you don't
want to miss that opportunityjust for fear of having bad
audio quality.
So, like you said, it's worththe risk.
Maybe it'll, you know, edit outyour ending sound, but it
provides the podcaster a way tograb that opportunity and still
(16:01):
have amazing audio when they getto their uploading process.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
And we say podcast conferences all the time,
because those are theconferences that we go to.
Right, if you're a teacher andyou do a teaching podcast, they
teaching podcast.
You have events where you'rewith other teachers and what we
want you to be able to do is youdon't have to carry all your
podcasting gear with you, likeyou have your phone.
Your phone has a voice memosapp on it.
Grab that, ask a question.
(16:25):
Oh, here's the newsuperintendent in our school
district and I happen to be atthis meeting tonight and now I'm
talking with them.
Do you mind if I record this,because I have a podcast and I
would like to play a segment?
Yeah, sure, great, okay, bringout your voice memo apps, hit
record, ask them your questions,get their answers, insert it
into the middle of your podcastepisode.
But then you're like now thissounds terrible compared to
everything else.
Great, run it through PowerClean it will make it all sound.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
So that is power clean.
Now, what is filler killer?
Sounds aggressive, but let usknow.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, it's a fun marketing term.
I mean, really what it's doingis it's cutting out filler words
.
It's ums and ahs and uh andthose types of words that all of
us use as humans when we'rethinking about stuff, but
especially in podcasting.
A lot of people don't podcastenough to have trained
(17:19):
themselves enough that insteadof using filler words, it's best
to just have silence, like it'sokay if you're thinking, but
just let the room breathe for asecond.
Try not to use filler wordsthat much, because they can be a
little bit annoying as alistener If you're listening to
somebody talk for hours andhours and hours, and every 15 to
20 seconds they're saying um oruh or you know.
And so filler killer.
(17:40):
Well, here's the other thing isthat you can clean all those up
and post.
Like, while you're editing, youcan go in and select every
single one of those little umsand ahs and delete them.
Sure, no problem, but it takeshours.
It's so infuriating as a as apodcast editor to cut all of
them out, and if you cut toomany it starts to sound
unnatural.
And well, all of that uh magichas been built into this feature
(18:04):
that we call filler killer.
It is a gentle touch of removingfiller words.
It doesn't remove every singleone.
If a filler word bleeds intoanother word, it will leave it
alone so that your podcast stillsounds natural, and it saves
you all the time of having to dothat manually.
So that is a beautiful featurefor most podcasters I would
recommend.
Yeah, just turn it on.
(18:24):
If you don't use filler wordsthat much, it's not going to do
much.
But if you happen to have aguest on who does use a lot of
filler words, it will save youall that editing time, and so
it's wonderful.
It doesn't catch every fillerword, one of the most common.
Now I have teenagers but theysay like, like every like 30
seconds when you're talking tothem.
Like is not a filler word andso it won't.
(18:46):
I mean it kind of is now, butit's also not.
It's also a word that we usevery commonly, like when we're
explaining something, forexample, and so it won't cut out
words like that, but it willcut out all the ums and ahs and
moo and weird sounds in betweenyour normal dialogue.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
That makes sense, that like is not considered a
filler word, but man, I wouldsay amongst younger.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
It might be soon.
The amount of times that peopledrop it nowadays.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Absolutely.
Yes, I actually had a professorin college that told me silence
is okay, don't say um.
And every time we would raiseour hands for a question we'd
say um and he'd go no.
And I wish it stuck, but Istill use them.
So I need filler killer.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, so he was the original filler killer.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
He was yeah, it's a hard habit to break, so we're
going to help you out with that.
Well, actually I just want totake a moment, because we just
released these new parts ofMagic Mastering.
I want to include an example sothat our listeners tuning in
can hear just how powerful thesefeatures are.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, it's a great example of recording in a noisy
environment and what that soundslike before and after power
clean.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Can I say two things?
Um, going to bat for otherpeople is the name of the game.
So, um, that attracts a certainkind of personality, that
attracts a certain kind ofperson.
Can I say two things?
Going to bat for other peopleis the name of the game.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So that attracts a certain kind of personality,
that attracts a certain kind ofperson I love that example
because it was very noisy and itshows like how powerful power
clean can be, especially whenit's used in like really bad
audio.
Another one that's reallyinteresting is the filler killer
example.
James Cridland on the pod newsdaily podcast did an example of
(20:33):
him using a lot of filler wordsand then seeing how Filler
Killer cleaned that up.
Can you cue that up, Boris?
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Absolutely.
Let's take a listen to that one.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Here's John McDermott telling us about his favorite
fast food restaurant McDonald's.
They're tasty, they're quick,they aren't a lot to produce.
And here it is after fillerkiller McDonald's they're tasty,
they're quick, they aren't alot to produce.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Wow, that, that's impressive.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
I love that one because that's not us like
coming up with a perfect exampleto tout our own feature.
That's just James who happensto use Buzzsprout to host that
podcast and he's just tryingthat out.
So I loved it.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Amazing that is going to save so much time in editing
.
I know our podcasters arealready loving that feature
those who are using it, and yeah.
So if you haven't tried thatyet and you're hosted here with
us on Buzzsprout, go ahead andgive that a try on your next
episode.
Actually, you could try it forfree if you're on a paid plan
with Buzzsprout.
So just go ahead and enablethat inside of your Buzzsprout
account.
(21:40):
And if you ever have questionsabout your audio maybe the
quality or why does my audiosound different and I want it to
sound better the PodcasterSuccess Team is always here to
help you with that.
So you can reach out to us atany time at support at
buzzsproutcom or even using thehelp form inside of your
Buzzsprout account or yourBuzzsprout app.
We are always here to walk youthrough those steps of
troubleshooting your audio.
So while we're tackling commonquestions we see in the support
(22:01):
inbox, I actually also want tohear from you, our listeners.
If you have an idea or you havea question that you want us to
answer on a future episode.
Just click the send us a textlink in the show notes and we'll
be able to feature yourquestion on a future podcasting
Q&A episode.
So, kevin, thank you so muchfor joining me so that we could
tackle this question together.
(22:21):
You're obviously an expert, andI'm just so appreciative that
you shared your knowledge withus today, so thank you so much
for being here.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Absolutely.
I loved it.
Thank you, it was fun.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Podcasting Q&A is available in all of your
favorite podcasting apps, so besure to join us every Monday to
kickstart your week.
Thanks for listening, have agreat week and, as always, keep
podcasting.
Welcome to Podcasting Q&A brought to you by the
people at Buzzsprout.
I'm your host, cara Passetti,and I'm bringing you the best
tips and strategies to keep youpodcasting with confidence.
With me today is Buzzsproutco-founder and tried and true
podcaster, kevin Finn.
He's a true expert when itcomes to audio, so I am very
(00:21):
excited to tackle this questiontogether.
Thanks, kevin, for being here.
So I am very excited to tacklethis question together.
Thanks, kevin for being here.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Hi, I'm excited to be here, tried and true podcaster.
Okay, I will do my best to liveup to these high expectations.
Thank you for the nice welcome.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
So today we're actually going to be talking
about magic mastering.
We see questions all the timein the support inbox from
podcasters that they're justasking how to make their audio
sound better.
So whether they're new andthey're just getting started and
they don't know thosetechniques, or they are a
seasoned podcaster with plentyof episodes under their belt but
they just want to take theiraudio to that next level.
(00:58):
So when we see that in thesupport inbox, our common
response is magic mastering.
In the support inbox, ourcommon response is Magic
Mastering.
It's a tool that we offer hereat Buzzsprout and it's commonly
referred to as the Instagramfilter for your audio.
As an Instagram user and afilter user, I am very thankful
for that.
It really cleans up my imagesand so Magic Mastering can do
(01:19):
that for your audio.
So I just want to firstintroduce Magic Mastering for
listeners who may have no ideawhat we're talking about.
Magic Mastering is an automatedfeature that we offer that
provides quality automation.
So it does this through threeparts smart, adaptive leveling,
perfect loudness and true peaktargeting and audio sweetening.
(01:40):
So, kevin, can you dive intothose three parts and let us
know kind of the technical partbehind it and why Magic
Mastering makes your podcastproduction process so much more
efficient.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Sure.
So let me start out by saying alot of people have maybe it's a
slight misunderstanding thatMagic Mastering is a tool for
amateur podcasters, and it'sreally not like I don't think
that's the best way to look atit Like.
So we do buzzcast weekly.
Jordan Alvin and I are on thatshow every week.
(02:12):
All of us have been podcastingfor years and years and years.
I think we just did an episodea couple weeks ago where we said
like the combined podcastingexperience between all of us is
over 30 years of combinedexperience of podcasting.
So none of us would probablyconsider ourselves amateur
podcasters, but we still usethis tool because in one way,
(02:32):
it's very much like an insurancepolicy.
So, even though Jordan is anexpert podcast producer she's an
excellent editor and she knowsexactly every step that you
should do to get your audioperfect and published there's a
possibility that she could makea slight mistake, like we're all
humans, right.
Well, computer programs, on theother hand, just do the same
thing every time, so they veryrarely would make a mistake.
(02:55):
They're not going to skip astep.
They don't know how to skip astep, they only know how to
follow instructions.
And so we run magic masteringnumber one as an insurance
policy.
So, just in case Jordanexported the file and she chose
the wrong format or her settingsgot messed up somehow or
something, is an insurancepolicy on the end to make sure
that everything goes outperfectly?
The other reason that we use itis that it's a massive time
(03:15):
saver, and correcting audiolevels is not something.
It's not a good use ofsomebody's time, and so magic
mastering is a huge time saver.
Now let me dive into those threethings that you asked for.
Number one smart adaptiveleveling.
What is that?
The easiest way to think aboutthat is that when you have
multiple people on a recording,or even one person, and you have
sound effects or something likethat, you want all those sounds
(03:37):
to be consistent, right?
So this wouldn't be a very goodepisode for you to listen to If
every time I started talking, Iwas super loud and boomy and
then Kara started talking andshe was softer.
Like think about if you weretrying to listen to that while
you're driving down the road,you constantly be adjusting the
volume, so be like oh, kara'stalking, now I need to turn her
up a little bit.
I know Kevin's talking now.
It's too loud, I got to turnthat down.
So we want consistency betweenall the voices and the sounds
(04:00):
that you hear in one audiorecording, and so it will do
that for you without you havingto do any work.
Number two perfect loudness andtrue peak targeting.
This comes from the Applepodcast recommendations for how
loud voices should be in theaudio file that you upload to
distribute as a podcast.
Now, why Apple?
(04:21):
Well, because Apple is kind ofthe first really big mover in
the podcasting space.
They brought podcasting to theiPod years and years and years
ago and that sort of kicked offthe popularity of what podcasts
are today.
So Apple back then came up withsome standards and everyone's
just sort of followed them fromthat point forward.
So that is the standard inpodcasting.
And now I'm going to hit youwith some technical stuff.
That is not going to make senseto a lot of people, and that's
(04:43):
totally fine.
But they recommend that theoverall loudness remain at
negative 16 decibels, with aplus or minus one dB tolerance
and a true peak value thatdoesn't exceed negative one dB.
If you don't know what thatmeans, like me, I don't really
know what that means, but Idon't have to, because Magic
Mastering does know what thatmeans and it will match those
(05:05):
specs perfectly for the filethat you run through it.
And the third thing that itdoes is audio sweetening, and so
that's filtering out noises,hiss and hums and stuff like
that.
And so every now and then you'llget some noise into a recording
that you don't want.
That's not a part of it.
You could have an airconditioner running that your
microphone is picking up.
You could have a fan in yourroom.
You could have a lawnmower thatdrives by unexpectedly outside
(05:27):
your window while you'rerecording.
You don't want that in thefinal edit and those things can
be hard to get out.
Sometimes magic mastering isreally good at getting out like
consistent noises.
This is in the default setting.
So if you have that airconditioner and it's humming the
entire time that you'rerecording, it will pull that out
, no problem.
Every now and then, like I said,you might have something weird
(05:47):
like the lawnmower that comes by, or you're recording in a
particularly noisy space.
You might be outside at a parkinterviewing somebody and
there's a lot of wind noise orbackground noise.
You might be recording at apodcast conference and so
there's people all over theplace and you're like it's
actually too much all over theplace and you're like it's
actually too much, it's hard tohear the voices.
How do I clean that up a littlebit?
You might be recording in aroom that doesn't have a lot of
sound treatment, so there's somereverb in the room which is
(06:08):
sort of that weird hollow echoeysound.
So there's this other featurethat we'll dig into in a little
bit, called power clean, andthat can reduce and eliminate
some of those noises that arereally hard to get out of
because they're inconsistent.
So those are the three thingssmart adaptive leveling, perfect
loudness and true peaktargeting and audio sweetening.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Awesome, thank you.
Those terms sound so simplewhen we just lay them out on
paper.
And then you go in the behindthe scenes and you're throwing
out words like true, peak andnegative decibel levels, and it
can get a little overwhelmingand, as any podcaster knows,
it's not typical that you canjust record something, throw it
out there and it soundsexcellent.
(06:48):
So this is a helpful tool toease the efficiency of all the
other things that you have to do, so you can focus on content
creation.
What is it that you're saying?
You know, let us handle thispart on having your audio at the
levels it needs to be and sothat, ultimately, your listener
wants to keep coming back andhearing your podcast.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Right, and that's really why I love that line that
says it's an Instagram filterfor your audio, because
oftentimes people are prettygood at taking photographs right
, especially with the phones andstuff and how good the cameras
are on the phones.
A lot of people have gottenreally good at taking really
good photographs, but do theyneed to know everything, like,
do they need to then invest inPhotoshop and know how to do
(07:29):
color grading and know how toadjust the levels and the
brightness and the contrast andsaturation and all that kind of
stuff?
No, not for the most part.
No.
To get a good photo that youwant to post on your social or
share with your family, youdon't.
You just want to go in andclick on a different filter or
click on the little magic wandand have it just brighten it up
a little bit, and that is thesame thing that we're trying to
(07:49):
do with.
Magic mastering is that you cancreate great content, but there
could be some little audioartifacts in there that just,
for whatever reason, doesn'tsound exactly right.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
Since we're not talking about photos and we're
talking about podcasting.
Most podcasts are typicallysomeone speaking.
It is not a theatricalperformance with music, and it's
mostly spoken word, maybebetween one host or multiple
hosts.
That is the typical podcastthat we hear, and so when you're
(08:16):
uploading a spoken word podcastat Buzzsprout, we recommend you
use a monophile, meaning onechannel.
And so, kevin, can you tell usthe difference between a
monophile and a stereophile, andis there a time that it's
appropriate to use a stereophilewhen creating a spoken word
podcast?
Speaker 2 (08:35):
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
So if you think about, well,I'm going to try to give you
visual examples as much aspossible.
Like you said, a monofile isexactly what it sounds like.
It is one audio channel, and ifyou are a podcast person who's
speaking into a microphone,there's one voice going into one
microphone and so you only needone channel.
(08:55):
Now you would be like but allthe music I listen to is stereo
and it comes out of my devicecalled a stereo.
What is stereo?
Stereo is two or more channels,but typically it's just two,
and you usually have a left anda right speaker.
Now, once you get to the pointwhere you want something
different coming out of eachspeaker, then at a minimum you
need two channels, right.
(09:16):
So you need a left channel anda right channel.
Again, we're just speaking ingeneral terms here, because
maybe you're playing some musicand you want more drums out of
the left side, and there aresome amazing things that music
producers can do when they goeven beyond two channels to use
the subwoofers and all that kindof stuff to make the music
really sound like you're in aconcert hall.
In podcasting we don't do allthat.
(09:37):
We don't have all thoseluxuries.
Usually it's just one personspeaking into one microphone,
another person speaking intoanother microphone.
So when would stereo be abenefit for a podcaster?
Well, there's this really coolgenre in podcasting called audio
drama, and oftentimes you havepeople who aren't just having a
conversation, they're actuallytrying to act out a scene, but
it's just through audio, and soyou might want to make it sound
(10:01):
like somebody is, you know,coming into the room and
entering from the right side andthen they're moving to the
center of the room and if you dothat really well, you can
actually hear that in yourheadphones.
Like it would sound likethey're more on the right and
then they walk over and nowthey're more on the left, and
that's called like audio panningand stuff.
And so some of the people whodo like audio dramas just one
example would take advantage ofthe stereo capabilities if they
(10:23):
had it available to them.
But most podcasters, most of thetime I don't want to lose this
point Most of the podcasters,most of the time you just want
to do a monofile.
Why?
Why not use stereo anyway?
Well, because it doubles thesize of the file and anybody
who's listening to your podcasthas to download that file, and
so downloading takes time.
The bigger the file, the longerit's going to take to download.
(10:43):
So I don't know if you've everhad this experience, kara, but I
do this all the time.
My podcasts are not set to autodownload to my phone.
I just use the default settingson my podcast app, which means
when I'm sitting in an airplanegetting ready to take off, I am
scrambling, trying to queue upepisodes so that I don't have to
pay the $16 for Wi-Fi on theflight to listen to podcasts.
So I'm scrambling and I'm likedownload, download, download,
(11:04):
download, and I'm watching thelittle progress meters go as
we're shooting down the runwayat 150 miles an hour getting
ready to lift off and I'm likeI've got 30 seconds of Wi-Fi
left before I've got to payDelta's 20 bucks.
So the smaller the audio fileis better, smaller audio file is
better and you're not going tolose any audio quality.
You're literally just sayingjust give me one channel instead
(11:25):
of two channels.
Why double the amount of dataif the same thing is still going
to come out of both sides of myheadphones?
Speaker 1 (11:31):
That's such a key point that you make.
Yeah, you're not going to losethe audio quality.
Save your listeners some time.
Save them the $20 Wi-Fi fee,that's right.
Save them the $20 Wi-Fi fee andget your audio to them.
Yeah, we do get this questionin the support inbox and we
don't want to take away frompodcasters who are creating
audio drama or are creatingpodcasts where they're
incorporating music and takingthat time.
(11:53):
We want to provide a way foryou to add that stereo file to
Buzzsprout.
So that's another benefit ofmagic mastering.
A lot of podcasters use MagicMastering to enhance their audio
, but if you are recording yourpodcast and you want to upload a
stereo file, you can do thatthrough Magic Mastering.
You can switch Magic Masteringfrom talk to music and then you
(12:15):
would be able to upload yourstereo files to Buzzsprout and
we can get them across to thedirectory.
So that is an option.
It's just through MagicMastering.
So thank you for clarifyingthat, kevin.
That helps a lot.
Yeah, all right.
So Kevin, in the beginning ofthis episode, kind of gave away
our grand finale.
Recently, magic Mastering hashad a couple of changes, so
(12:39):
Magic Mastering has been on thescene since 2021.
It is widely used by many ofour podcasters, who host their
podcasts here with us, but wegave it a little upgrade this
year, and so, kevin, since youare the one who gave one of
these features their name, Iwant you to introduce these last
two features, and I know you'reexcited to talk about them.
(13:01):
I'm excited, and so let us knowwhat they are and why we should
be so excited to use them.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Okay, so there are two features, and one is called
Power Clean, the other is calledFiller Killer.
So let's talk about power cleanfirst.
One of our base mantras withmagic mastering is sort of this
do no harm mentality.
Whatever you upload, we want todo the best that we can to make
it sound better, but never atthe cost or risk of making it
sound worse.
(13:27):
Right, okay, so everything thatwe do, we take a very gentle
approach to it.
Specifically when we're talkingabout like our noise reduction
features, they're very gentleand, like I said, if you have
like a consistent backgroundnoise like an air conditioner is
the most common example that werun into it's very good at
removing that because it'sconsistent throughout the entire
(13:47):
audio recording, and so thesoftware can easily identify
that consistent hum and it canremove it without messing
anything up Every now and then.
The gentle clean is not theright approach because and so
the software can easily identifythat consistent hum and it can
remove it without messinganything up Every now and then.
The gentle clean is not theright approach because you might
have an episode that wasrecorded in a particularly noisy
environment.
Another common thing thathappens all the time is that you
might have guests on yourpodcast and you're looking at
them on a screen share videoscreen and it looks like they
(14:10):
have a microphone in front oftheir face, but they actually
have the wrong microphoneselected, like in their
configuration.
So they're actually using theirlaptop microphone, even though
you're looking at a veryexpensive microphone sitting in
front of their face and you'relike, why doesn't that sound
very good?
Anyway, you don't want tooffend your guests, so you just
push through and now you havethis really rough audio
recording and it might have alot of reverb or something.
In cases like that, in specialcases, we have rolled out this
(14:35):
feature called power clean soyou can't turn it on to default
run on all your episodes becauseit's too aggressive, like it
does have the potential that itcould do some harm, but, like,
for example, in buzzcast, we endall of our episodes with this
little um hang up sound.
It's like a boop and it's likejust kind of, because we do post
shows sometimes.
Well, when we, when we've runpower clean on our episodes, it
cuts that out.
(14:55):
Oh, wow, it completely removesit.
And why?
Well, because we have anaggressive algorithm that's
saying there's this is atroubled recording and it's got
weird noises in it and we needyou to take those weird noises
out.
Okay, so that's what I when Isay like, do no harm, it's not
going to make your voice soundterrible, but it might cut out
some stuff that you didn't wantcut out.
But we would take that hit ifwe were recording in a live
(15:17):
podcast conference and there wasall this background noise and
you couldn't hear the episode.
Otherwise, it will save thatepisode, but it will also cut
out our ending noise.
So it's a good trade-off inextreme examples, and so that is
a feature that we're superexcited about.
We hope it's going to save alot of recordings where people
think there's nothing I can dowith this.
Hey, run it through PowerClean.
There's a good chance that itcan fix it up and save your
(15:37):
episode.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Absolutely, and if a podcaster sees an opportunity to
record with a guest, maybe it'sa once in a lifetime, maybe
it's like you said you're at apodcast conference and you don't
want to miss that opportunityjust for fear of having bad
audio quality.
So, like you said, it's worththe risk.
Maybe it'll, you know, edit outyour ending sound, but it
provides the podcaster a way tograb that opportunity and still
(16:01):
have amazing audio when they getto their uploading process.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
And we say podcast conferences all the time,
because those are theconferences that we go to.
Right, if you're a teacher andyou do a teaching podcast, they
teaching podcast.
You have events where you'rewith other teachers and what we
want you to be able to do is youdon't have to carry all your
podcasting gear with you, likeyou have your phone.
Your phone has a voice memosapp on it.
Grab that, ask a question.
(16:25):
Oh, here's the newsuperintendent in our school
district and I happen to be atthis meeting tonight and now I'm
talking with them.
Do you mind if I record this,because I have a podcast and I
would like to play a segment?
Yeah, sure, great, okay, bringout your voice memo apps, hit
record, ask them your questions,get their answers, insert it
into the middle of your podcastepisode.
But then you're like now thissounds terrible compared to
everything else.
Great, run it through PowerClean it will make it all sound.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
So that is power clean.
Now, what is filler killer?
Sounds aggressive, but let usknow.
Speaker 2 (16:57):
Yeah, it's a fun marketing term.
I mean, really what it's doingis it's cutting out filler words
.
It's ums and ahs and uh andthose types of words that all of
us use as humans when we'rethinking about stuff, but
especially in podcasting.
A lot of people don't podcastenough to have trained
(17:19):
themselves enough that insteadof using filler words, it's best
to just have silence, like it'sokay if you're thinking, but
just let the room breathe for asecond.
Try not to use filler wordsthat much, because they can be a
little bit annoying as alistener If you're listening to
somebody talk for hours andhours and hours, and every 15 to
20 seconds they're saying um oruh or you know.
And so filler killer.
(17:40):
Well, here's the other thing isthat you can clean all those up
and post.
Like, while you're editing, youcan go in and select every
single one of those little umsand ahs and delete them.
Sure, no problem, but it takeshours.
It's so infuriating as a as apodcast editor to cut all of
them out, and if you cut toomany it starts to sound
unnatural.
And well, all of that uh magichas been built into this feature
(18:04):
that we call filler killer.
It is a gentle touch of removingfiller words.
It doesn't remove every singleone.
If a filler word bleeds intoanother word, it will leave it
alone so that your podcast stillsounds natural, and it saves
you all the time of having to dothat manually.
So that is a beautiful featurefor most podcasters I would
recommend.
Yeah, just turn it on.
(18:24):
If you don't use filler wordsthat much, it's not going to do
much.
But if you happen to have aguest on who does use a lot of
filler words, it will save youall that editing time, and so
it's wonderful.
It doesn't catch every fillerword, one of the most common.
Now I have teenagers but theysay like, like every like 30
seconds when you're talking tothem.
Like is not a filler word andso it won't.
(18:46):
I mean it kind of is now, butit's also not.
It's also a word that we usevery commonly, like when we're
explaining something, forexample, and so it won't cut out
words like that, but it willcut out all the ums and ahs and
moo and weird sounds in betweenyour normal dialogue.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
That makes sense, that like is not considered a
filler word, but man, I wouldsay amongst younger.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
It might be soon.
The amount of times that peopledrop it nowadays.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
Absolutely.
Yes, I actually had a professorin college that told me silence
is okay, don't say um.
And every time we would raiseour hands for a question we'd
say um and he'd go no.
And I wish it stuck, but Istill use them.
So I need filler killer.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Yeah, so he was the original filler killer.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
He was yeah, it's a hard habit to break, so we're
going to help you out with that.
Well, actually I just want totake a moment, because we just
released these new parts ofMagic Mastering.
I want to include an example sothat our listeners tuning in
can hear just how powerful thesefeatures are.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, it's a great example of recording in a noisy
environment and what that soundslike before and after power
clean.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
Can I say two things?
Um, going to bat for otherpeople is the name of the game.
So, um, that attracts a certainkind of personality, that
attracts a certain kind ofperson.
Can I say two things?
Going to bat for other peopleis the name of the game.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
So that attracts a certain kind of personality,
that attracts a certain kind ofperson I love that example
because it was very noisy and itshows like how powerful power
clean can be, especially whenit's used in like really bad
audio.
Another one that's reallyinteresting is the filler killer
example.
James Cridland on the pod newsdaily podcast did an example of
(20:33):
him using a lot of filler wordsand then seeing how Filler
Killer cleaned that up.
Can you cue that up, Boris?
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Absolutely.
Let's take a listen to that one.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
Here's John McDermott telling us about his favorite
fast food restaurant McDonald's.
They're tasty, they're quick,they aren't a lot to produce.
And here it is after fillerkiller McDonald's they're tasty,
they're quick, they aren't alot to produce.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
Wow, that, that's impressive.
Speaker 2 (21:03):
I love that one because that's not us like
coming up with a perfect exampleto tout our own feature.
That's just James who happensto use Buzzsprout to host that
podcast and he's just tryingthat out.
So I loved it.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Amazing that is going to save so much time in editing
.
I know our podcasters arealready loving that feature
those who are using it, and yeah.
So if you haven't tried thatyet and you're hosted here with
us on Buzzsprout, go ahead andgive that a try on your next
episode.
Actually, you could try it forfree if you're on a paid plan
with Buzzsprout.
So just go ahead and enablethat inside of your Buzzsprout
account.
(21:40):
And if you ever have questionsabout your audio maybe the
quality or why does my audiosound different and I want it to
sound better the PodcasterSuccess Team is always here to
help you with that.
So you can reach out to us atany time at support at
buzzsproutcom or even using thehelp form inside of your
Buzzsprout account or yourBuzzsprout app.
We are always here to walk youthrough those steps of
troubleshooting your audio.
So while we're tackling commonquestions we see in the support
(22:01):
inbox, I actually also want tohear from you, our listeners.
If you have an idea or you havea question that you want us to
answer on a future episode.
Just click the send us a textlink in the show notes and we'll
be able to feature yourquestion on a future podcasting
Q&A episode.
So, kevin, thank you so muchfor joining me so that we could
tackle this question together.
(22:21):
You're obviously an expert, andI'm just so appreciative that
you shared your knowledge withus today, so thank you so much
for being here.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Absolutely.
I loved it.
Thank you, it was fun.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Podcasting Q&A is available in all of your
favorite podcasting apps, so besure to join us every Monday to
kickstart your week.
Thanks for listening, have agreat week and, as always, keep
podcasting.
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