 Podcasts was roundtable round one zero four Audio quality good versus good enough and are inspired guests round table or hurt you put down in the When you go to podcast around table comm slash guest you can sign up to be on a round table not this one the future one and When you sign up you should be put into this form that says Tell us some things you want to talk about and Jane put in determining one of the things Jane put in was determining Acceptable audio quality for your podcast the difference between perfection and good enough, which is a great topic I think every podcaster Struggles with this especially in the beginning like they want good audio or do they know what good audio is Do you know bad audio is do you push it out there and it gets better over time? There's all kinds of things going on when it comes to audio and it's not always the easiest thing to do and yet It doesn't have to be hard or expensive. So anyways, I think there's enough meat on that bone for a good topic but We'll meet the roundtablers in just a second not to bring things way down, but I just want to say that podcast roundtable 91 and when was that? April this year Scott Smith was a roundtabler unfortunately a few weeks ago or a couple weeks real recently He took his life and his wife's as well. So Really tragic. We're sad to hear that news Obviously he was suffering so, you know, I know that we are we're friends here And you maybe come on a roundtable one time and you barely know us But we're a community and if you are going through something Even us hopefully you tell someone close to you But grab anyone. I mean even us We're all here to listen like if you need help reach out because that's just that's the worst possible result so he had daughters and Now they're without parents. So it's really sad and they have there is a go fund me for the girls Which you can contribute to and it looks like a lot of people Have so far. So that's fantastic But nothing's ever gonna replace that so they need a lot of help I will put a link in the description for podcast around table.com Slash one zero four if you want to contribute to that that would be amazing. So sad but Reach out reach out for sure. All right, you guys will try to bring it back up here and Let's meet the roundtable Dave co-host extraordinary. Welcome back buddy Yeah, Dave Jackson from the school of podcasting calm looking forward to this I have fun little stories and bumper sticker kind of things that we can throw in here. It'll be fun filled in exciting Bumper. So did you just come here to pitch your products Dave? No, no Okay Okay, all right. Hey new round table or Jane welcome to your first round table. Hi, thank you for having me So I'm Jane Ellen and I have a podcast called glistening particles where I talked to Pretty much random people that I barely meet about 10 minutes before I get on the air with them And here they're really inspiring stories and hopefully everyone will check it out. Cool It's like the round table minus the inspiring stories here No, no, there'll be plenty. There'll be plenty. Yeah, and maybe two time round table a second time back third time I don't yeah Tyler welcome back. Hi. Thanks. I'm just here to keep things interesting last time I think I was late and this time I bring all the technical issues So he's got this beautiful Mike sitting in front of him the same one you see sitting in front of me and He's also wearing earbuds just like me except I'm listening through mine and Tyler's actually listening and communicating So but guess what? Oh, I totally peaked the audio there. Guess what Tyler's audio is good enough, right? Yeah, I hope I hope I make a perfect example of what this episode supposed to be all about and just before I logged in here My my mic more or less you guys tell me completely wasn't working I tested it on my own thought I had it all set up and of course It was not working at all. So here we are using the traditional iPod Headphone route and Jane's using them to and they actually sound fantastic They are certainly good enough for something like that I think that maybe Jane's voice is just superior to Tyler's because she sounds amazing No, I have a mic. I have a mic The tiny shore. Yeah, it's a baby. It's a baby sure No, I have a mic. Yeah, and actually that from you it's or like eight inches eight six eight inches That's impressive Yeah And actually I have a collection of mics that I've collected over the last couple of years And this is the least expensive and what I would call the most rinky-tink and size because it's really light But it actually makes my voice sound the best. It's a blue snowball ripoff. It looks like except that it sounds No, really good Sure, I think it's MV MV 5. Yeah, I know I should stop doing that. Sorry about that That we know we have to know it's a sure MV 5 so he said we'll get up in the description Okay, yeah, I love it actually it's my favorite of all of the ones I have it does the best work with my voice I'm super impressed with the way it sounds Dave I mean like a mic that's six to eight inches away from your mouth. It really shouldn't sound that great No, you should sound like you're in a bathtub or a bathroom or something with reverb and that sounds great Yeah, so that's a good thing. Yeah. No, you should sound like you're in a bath. Oh, okay Because I'm not in the bathroom. I was trying to make sure that was clear back here All right, so well, let me ask you Jane when you wrote this down Actually, I don't think it was that long ago. You probably haven't been on the list terribly long some of you have I'm sorry Only 17 months, but whatever I'm just kidding. No, it's really Do you remember why this is one of the things you listed right so Most of the time I do my recordings over Skype using call recorder because I talk with people around the world So I haven't quite got the the travel budget on my podcast to go to visit everyone in person So it works really well for that But then there are times where I'm doing some live in person not live but in person recordings And one of them was in a coffee shop and that was a heck of a time trying to get that cleaned up and make and sound good Because because the people behind me I didn't pay attention to what was behind me I paid attention to it was behind the person I was interviewing but the people behind me were having like a four woman School create some sort of big project thing So it was just like chatter chatter chatter chatter And then the other thing is I recorded at an Airbnb and it was really high ceilings And I just you could totally tell that sound so When I started my podcast I was really obsessive about trying to learn everything about sound and microphones And I want to spend all this money and ultimately I learned that just a few things can make it sound really good And good is good enough, you know, you got to get to that point where it's good enough For sure. Yeah, so that's too long of an answer. It's not a really long now that I Didn't start with you're like back in 1987 because sometimes we get like No, that's not happening. That's not gonna happen here So Tyler gets to you Sitting in front of the high lbr 40 but which I assume is your regular microphone, but is that where you started? No, it's definitely not where I started, but I did start kind of just messing with I Always wished I could play instruments better than I could so the technology of recording stuff was actually What I was able to kind of master more so I'd like Record myself very poorly playing guitar and then I realized, you know what? I can speak better than I can play an instrument. So how about I how about I try podcasting instead? So I had like a Shore SM 57 and that's kind of the cheap Well, it's not it's not cheap, but it's that everything music Yeah, right It's the every rock star kind of Mike, right? It's like a hundred fifty dollars and I've run it into a really cheap preamp USB preamp and then now yeah, I have the Hile and a Focusrite Scarlett six I six they're not hearing any of right now and This isn't the first time that this has happened and not with this specific setup But just as you pile things on your chances of something going wrong Really quickly increase, you know add a USB mic He gets a little worse at a mixer and a real mic and basically then you just want to never touch anything on your desk And unfortunately, I've had to format my computer recently to have a hard drive replaced. So I bet this is just You know a bug that it had I haven't run into yet. So yeah, yeah And it's I mean it's it is as you increase your attempt at quality to improve the quality It actually gets harder, right? There's more things like you said and there's more stuff in the audio chain So to speak, I mean if you're watching this Podcasts around table dot com slash live if you're watching it You'll see that I also have a high up here 40 but you know that goes right now it's crazy because it's going into a Compressor dbx and then it's going into a mixer and then that's coming out into the audio interface I mean, this is all these all these places where it could go bad as opposed to for most of this show I use the ATR 2100 and I would go direct USB In fact, I asked Tyler if he had one because it's a fantastic sounds fantastic And it's just USB to microphone And if that doesn't work that way then something's just wrong with your USB your mic or your computer I mean, it's not a lot to diagnose in this case, you know, we had Tyler like rip out You're like, hey take the mixer out of the equation take this out of the equation and it was time to go So we went with earbuds. They're good enough, right? So the whole point so I guess that makes me think You know, what is what is bad audio? What where do we hit good enough? You know in this case? Well Tyler Just to communicate we started with your onboard microphone and and someone said Jane what did you say? It sounded like a toilet was continually blushing in the background Right, and I don't even know what was going like it's it's just like this warble. You get I mean the onboard microphone They're just really bad, right? I would say that's not good enough Yeah, never good enough There's there's one episode of my podcast where I had selected the wrong input again that you know adding more things to the chain I had all my guests input selected correctly. Mine was the internal computer So I'm sitting three feet away And I kind of felt too bad to let the episode disappear because they had given me this time to talk and so I Put it out there in the world with me sound the host sounding terrible and I guess sounding great So yeah, there are many things that can go wrong, which is why I'm always jealous watching your Instagram stories. So I mean if anybody doesn't watch raise Instagram stories They're fantastic for seeing him set up his in-home studio because it just stays that way once you get it working, you know And I'm always like moving stuff around No, I wish it was that way like I have to reset up This this episode is a few minutes late probably because part of it I was like wait, it's been too long since the last roundtable, you know, it's been too long when I can't figure out Where do I plug that thing in to make it record in this weird? Like it's been too many weeks when I can't remember how to set up the thing So even though I have a dedicated space for this stuff. I still find myself Unplugging and replugging in for different setups. It's crazy, right? And so in a lot of cases it's better to just have a USB mic and again I said it doesn't have to be expensive and it doesn't have to be hard that ATR 2100 is a fantastic mic It's a great place to start the the you know, it's easy, right? It's easy to learn to figure out and I mean, that's sure that you have right there Jane That's USB, right? It goes right into your computer and it sounds amazing So how much is the one that you the ATR 2100? Because this was about a hundred bucks. It's sub 100. It's you can get it on sale for like 60 to 70 bucks I know isn't that crazy like people think it has to be so expensive and These cheaper ones are the ones we can rely on most of the time and that's got a lifetime warranty So I mean so many times if you break something that's sub 100 You're like I just buy another one and it's like you can actually ship it back and they'll give you a new one So nice. That's awesome. But Dave When do you remember recording like a horribly sounding audio or episode and did you publish it or what did you do? I've had a couple where it was either a Skype issue or something like that. I did one Where again kind of like Tyler's were the the guests sounded great I sounded horrible and I actually went in and re-recorded my questions and put them back in So you didn't really know that you like 10.5 hours. Yeah, it was like two weeks later I was ready to publish it. So that was so so it was not good enough for you You took a drastic measure and yeah sort of overdub. You you did ADR the movie I've done that too though I've done that where my audio was really bad and it was using a different version of Skype Skype for business And it doesn't have the same recorder built in and it was so bad So I couldn't put it out that way so that one I had to clean up my part, but there sounded great So that's the tough balance here, right? Like when is when is good good enough like Do you have ever scrapped an episode? because it just not published it because of some technical issue but mostly usually with the audio I Have one actually it's one of my favorite episodes, too And I don't think I can really recreate it and it was be it was one of my first ones I recorded when I really didn't know what I was doing yet, and I think I was using Gosh, I think I was using zoom or something like that to record it and the quality was just so bad I couldn't use it. It was so disappointing Because it was hysterical you didn't oh well, then that's hard to recreate I mean, you didn't ask was it you and a guest it was a guest It was a guest them to do it again Right we tried doing it again But then we did it worse because I was out I was out in Portland with him and a bunch of his friends And we tried to do a recording for a podcast with five people in the room with like two mics and that didn't work very well at all Okay, so that is a tougher situation, right? Yes More people in a room Dave have you ever tried to record multiple people? Yeah, I got hired once to do a recording at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame there was this big shindig and they had a bunch of CEOs coming in and there were five people in a room and The ceiling was ridiculously high and they're all around a boardroom So I don't have to worry too much about bleed But it's just this big echo chamber and so and then I'm having to tell everybody You know the microphone is your friends stay next to the microphone in that whole nine yards And what I was actually doing Luckily, it was you had one emcee who had asked somebody a question and then they would answer and then like nope It wasn't like a round table people didn't chime in they were they were they spoke when they were spoken to So what I was actually doing is on the board. I was actually when people weren't talking I was bringing down their fader and that would just watch this he was gonna touch next and I was big time and Yeah, that could have gone really those one of the things I'm like this is gonna either work or I'm going to be very embarrassed one of the two so like But that was that was one that was a little tough But I I hear people especially with a blue Yeti They think they can get away with a blue Yeti in the middle of the table and that's one of the lines that I go No, not for me. I can't yeah I mean you could essentially put your phone on a recorder and set it down the table and get I mean at that point If you're far enough away from the microphone, it's going to sound the same like people were in a room And they're nowhere near Those sorts of recording, right? Yeah, I mean if certainly if someone's hiring you for that's not going to be I've done I call the the Bob Barker where I don't have time to go get a recorder And I'll just talk into my phone it's a voice memo and then when they talk I stick my mic in front of their face And you just pass it back Good enough, right? Yeah, it was what you usually do in a case like that is I will announce the elephant in the room I'll be like I'm on the floor at Podcon Cheryl and that just kind of people know that's why there's weird noises in the background Yeah Tyler what I guess what let's see if you can do this. What would you define as bad audio? What's bad audio to you? Great. Oh Did he try he could not resist he wanted to get his good audio back in and it's not happening So let me answer the question for Tyler that is bad It sounds like I know I actually switched computers just so I could take a chance that maybe I could fix it So this is on a whole different machine. Oh, that's amazing. So wow really weird then it's very yeah Yeah, it's something's going on Back to the cat theory that your cat That's my treat on my treat on my Bluetooth. Yeah, well, I was ironically also though But that computer even sounds different on the earbuds. Yeah, we're getting A different preamp is this better or worse? I would say it's not it sounds it's not it's good We set this up we made sure What what would you say is bad what do you what would you define as bad audio if you listen to a podcast and you're like That's just not good audio. There's a lot of bad There's a lot of bad there I think probably the worst that I that I hear a lot of beginners do is Not concern themselves with proximity to the microphone Which is why this is passable right now at all like I know this isn't good But how you hear me but the only reason it's at all usable is because this microphone is one or two inches from my mouth that's the whole reason and So podcasters will go out and get a decent microphone I was talking to real recently they're starting her own and she was renting the gear So it's all really good gear, but she hadn't quite learned how important it was to face the microphone yet So listening in the car anytime this group of people in a room would look away you would totally hear that person drop off and Then you just can't follow the conversation So when they're on axis to the microphone It's acceptable you because I can understand you know It sounds great actually and they go off-axis and it's Unusable because I don't know what people are saying. I can't tell who's speaking So even sometimes a phone call can be better if you can understand the person The worst case is just non-comprehension Yeah, I listened to a show it was Barry Katz. I think he's fixed this Who's a very cats is a famous manager for he's managed every comedian on the planet And the show was called industry standard and Barry would bring them into his office And they would sit there with sure SM 58's holding them in their lap And inevitably somebody would forget and they would slowly put the mark further the mic further and further away From their mouth and so you'd have to turn it up to hear the guest and then get and then Barry would come back on Well, he's got the microphone up next to his mouth and he would just blow I remember listening thinking my windows were just gonna shatter It was ridiculous Yeah, that's a tough one. I recently was on tour with a podcast and Definitely had some challenges and and we do a at the end of the show There's a guest Q&A and we go out in the audience and you know Normal people grab a microphone and heavily they they'll fall down here or something else and I'm you know front of house waving my arms like tell them to get the microphone up Well, fortunately, I took a producer right next to that person and said it is your job to literally shove the mic But bring it up and and and she did a great job at doing that and it made all the difference because I mean You know with something like you're saying SM 58 I mean you get just a little distance from it and it's got so much rejection And it's a dynamic microphone and you need to be on top of that microphone And so and so that is that can be tough and you know, we did a show It was a regular it was a podcast and they decided because we were at this theater and a live show Last minute maybe a couple days before and they said hey You know what we're gonna do is we're going to have 12 acapella singers sing the intro song. So we're gonna need to know Mike In this kind of tour like theaters like all my stuff's ordered and you would think the theaters are just equipped with all this stuff They're not everyone you bring in all your stuff like this was new to me and finding out that it didn't have stuff on hand They have some stuff But I had to scramble for mics man, and it was really came down to what was good enough You know they're telling me a ideally, you know, every guy would have a headset and I said that's not happening like between the wireless and the head I just not happening. So I I rented I got to the KSM 32's. I think they are they're they're Hyper-cardioid condenser microphones, whatever Stuck two of them pointing them out towards, you know I put the guys in a semi circle 10 of them and pointed those mics and told them to project as loud as possible and then I gave the two guys on the ends handhelds because one guy was like a beatboxer the other guy was a Bass and so you know with four microphones for 12 people it wasn't great But it was definitely good enough and it was just for the theme song So sometimes you have to scramble and figure out. How do I get enough microphones? You know, you might be Same situation happened. We had to record ads that I had three handheld microphones I scrambled in my gear bag and found a shotgun microphone for video And I put a giant windscreen on it and I told the guy to hold it still and you recorded ads that way They sounded great. So you do sometimes have to figure out. How do I take the situation? I'm in and make it a little better and like Dave you're saying, you know Fortunately, we all have microphones and recorders with us now and and like Tyler saying if you with the earbuds or even the microphones And these are good if you get close, right? And so get it close proximity is huge thing But then you have other issues that come into play when you get close to the microphone plosives, which is the air on the microphone You know, would that be you've got it close it sounds good But now it's full of plosives. Is that good enough? So you have to I think having a little bit of knowledge about How to produce at least decent sounding audio or you know, I always say that people don't know what bad audio is Until they actually hear it, right? There are totally and or I'm sorry until they hear really good audio, right? So these days in podcasting, I mean Dave when we started out it was stick mics and It was it was terrible and you didn't really know from one show to another and then you have NPR and all those guys come on the scene and you're like Whoa, that's what it's supposed to sound like, you know, not supposed to but you hear really good audio And then and then if you're a podcast You can you that the beauty is the playing field is level, right? You can be right next to an NPR show in iTunes If your show is really good and people find it and subscribe and all that stuff But if they subscribe to a show from NPR or a show from any big network And then they listen to your podcast there'll be a look and there's a huge drop-off. That's a potential problem You know, if you if you are being the human compressor where you're turning it up and turning it down to hear That's not good audio. So the audio can actually take a bad turn After it's recorded as well. I guess I had an example. I just listened to a show I do a show called the podcast rodeo show where I grab random podcasts and see how long I can hang on and the This way what? That's rodeo show calm eight second And so this podcast came on and it had the the deep voice man Explaining what was becoming on the episode and this week and such and such and such and in cool music and high energy And we're ready to go and then the host came on and she was using she was doing some sort of interview over the phone But I swear. She was underwater. It was just like thank you Like and the problem was in the same way that sometimes loud doesn't sound loud until you put it next to something soft This audio may not have sounded quite as bad. Although it was pretty bad But it started off with this cool, you know professional intro and it just made it sound ten times worse And I was just like I literally I lasted about four seconds as soon as she came on and like nope too many podcasts I listen to to you know friends don't let friends listen to bad audio Oh, I tuned out immediately That's an interesting one because I hear that all the time where people will pay for a professionally produced intro And you're like alright, and then the podcast starts like whoa Are they on their phone in a bathroom ten feet away? Like the drop-off is so different you make it painfully obvious You show the audience you show the audience what really good audio is and then immediately what really bad audio is There's another interesting way to work with that that you'll see NPR doing. It's really hyper produced shows Where they're capturing field recordings that are often, you know mediocre at best and then in the Storytelling they frame the structure of like and now we're on location And then it cuts to this location audio that's worse and you kind of accept it a little more You there's like a pre-apology and your brain is just like oh It's supposed to sound noisy and rustly and there's stuff in the background And then they come back to the studio and you feel comfortable with that whole interaction Instead of sitting in a noisy coffee shop for an hour and a half of friends chatting That's much much more challenging to stick with Yeah, I think that this is something that regularly, you know every podcast or faces who does interviews because you have Skype and You can't you know, you don't send necessarily sometimes you might but most of time you don't send an audio setup to your guests So you're you're at the mercy of what they have Right, and I think I saw it in the comments that you know people are used to because of the radio They're used to call-in shows on phones. They're used to the guest. Maybe not sounding as good or being on a phone But not as much the host I think you expect a little bit more from from the show itself At least I would say on a regular basis sure Can it happen one or two times where your audios to something went wrong and you had to step in with some other setup And it doesn't sound quite as good. Yeah, it's totally fine But you know, I think you should always be trying to at least produce audio that sounds You know, I always say don't let the tech get in the way of the content So yeah, I just don't want you shouldn't have to notice it You know the way a movie is edited if you notice the editing you're taken out of the story If you notice hiss or just complete echo and if you're concentrating all these problems that are on that audio might have You're not really getting the content Yeah, this is anybody good. I'm sorry if anybody doesn't already know about podcast guest guide calm It's a really great link to send to anybody you're gonna invite on that is just you know Podcast hosts got sick of route sending the same email to everybody and wrote out the instructions And it's a it's a really great starting point for anybody that isn't used to recording their own audio So cool link. What is that podcast? Yes guest guide calm. I'll put that in the show notes as well Yeah, it's it's from the host of unjustly maligned, which is a really really great show I enjoy so um, yeah, I found it useful because it's the same stuff I'm gonna tell them and it's the basics, you know A lot of people aren't gonna go buy their new microphone And even if they do they might run into the issues that I ran into today if they don't know how to set it up So, um, you know, it's a good shortcut Sorry Gabe Gonzalez in the chat room says I record my intro and outro live for each episode My thinking is it will sound consistent with the actual content of the episode actually really like this You can pre-record intros and outros you're like I'm saying the same thing every time But I guarantee you your voice sounds different every so I have I have stopped for an hour come back And I had one person they're like you sound like you record this a different time like I did buddy like what what are you listening on? Yes, I did So I do like, you know, oh, I've got this repetitive thing I say all the time and say all the time or even like maybe have a sponsor and you pre-record the ad read You know, that's a big one. I'm really frustrated when I hear the same pre-recorded ad reads because like this is this is the Girl, you only have to do one thing. We're only paying you do one thing in this episode You can you can at least you know give it even if it's the same ad read I really appreciate knowing that it's live and you can tell right away if you listen to the show every week Which is I think some of the problem with Dynamic ad insertion, you know, if it's the same thing where they just wedged in there to your audio Obviously you could do you could record a fresh one all the time, but yeah I mean you do it's funny what you notice as a listener. I mean we are we we're putting these damn things right in our ears We hear everything That's why I think the audio is so important because you do hear more than if you're you know People listen to the car as well and you'll get away with stuff But a lot of people plug it right in your ears, but yeah, I think that you know It's important to pay a little attention for Your content and for the person who's listening Jane go ahead and jump on top. So one of the things that when I was starting as a new podcaster I wanted to have this like velvety perfect sound, you know, I kept thinking I needed to get it perfect But what I've learned over time is I kind of like the grittiness of the way it sounds for for under pre or Not overproduced podcast sound. Yeah, the one thing that I do do every time though Is I do pull out just that like buzz that can be behind? Audio so I do a little bit of cleanup But I do it across the whole recording not across like in sections and that sort of thing So it's not noticeable, but to me it is when I get the final edit ready I can tell that it's a little bit cleaner, but still has that you know Someone's doing it at home and they're still giving it a good effort kind of sound. Yeah I mean, I think a podcast should be you know These are high up here 40s to be honest with you if I release if I record into this microphone Which is like 350 bucks or whatever and I just release it to me It doesn't sound good. This mic needs post-processing like right it just makes you sound muddy and ugly And I don't want to meet a podcaster in person and be like whoa, you sound nothing like Because this is a more personal medium like I think though being natural and and having yourself actually come through In the audio I think it's important for that connection, you know, we're not radio people are not voice talent So reproducing as cleanly, but they're natural sound. I think it's good and don't get me wrong I'm totally guilty of starting out and pushing the bass up way too high No one likes we are I always say we are the absolute worst people to be working on our audio I mean we do post-production and no one likes the way they sound so they Crank up the bass and it's all muddy and it's ugly and you you have to feel like it takes time to like find your Your own self in your audio It's the way I always do a bass test is that I had noticed that One of the best podcasts out there 99% invisible His voice happens to fall right in about the same register as my car Sounds on the highway. I go on all the time So it's I mean it sounds perfect in headphones or at home or in any controlled listening environment but it's just drowned out because he has Quite a low voice and I then was listening back to some line and realized I had done the same thing Occasionally by mixing myself a bit too low So now I make sure to not just listen in one environment or bring the recording into the car before I release it And make sure that I didn't add end up with more bass than my guest or because it's kind of easier to let myself Get overproduced since I have more of the gear that my guest usually does actually could I selfishly ask you Ray? What do you do to your hyal to to improve it because I I don't do anything to mine So oh, yeah, yeah, and maybe that's fine for your voice for me I mean, it's the one the one thing that a hyal needs personally What I think it might be that every is the one post process that every podcaster not only can do but should do because post Processing is unique to your own setup, right? But everybody can put a high pass or a low cut filter. Those are the same thing. So drop out everything below 80 Hertz I mean the male voice doesn't typically go below 80 Hertz maybe up to a hundred I need that muddy to me at least on my voice or my setup or wherever I record whatever it is the hyal to me It always sounds muddy and muddy is just sounds like you are talking from behind a door So I will cut out that low-end and I'll bring back a little bit that low-end that you're looking for It's actually in the mid to lower range. It's not in that super low range base. It's a mid range sound and it's a it's very Hard to find but so I cut that low the high-pass filter and I bring up just a little bit of the mid range and You know it changes. I'm trying to have audition here. I'm like, I want to pull up the Frequency to be like, yeah, but you know if I say it's at 260 You're gonna go and bump 260 and it's gonna sound like it's gonna sound bad But I will say the how for me it needs the muddiness dropped out of it. That's not glad to hear that That's the one that's the only thing I do and it's just in my presets on them on a master track Because because I worry about it. So yeah, so this so this What's that the frequencies that you're talking about like a hundred Hertz and down Those are usually the frequencies that we feel like those are the ones of a video game that just make the house rumble But you don't actually them it's it's more of so we don't need those and you're right that exactly it just muddies up the water muddy waters so That's where Dave plays guitar We're never set up for Dave it really How many do we have to do before Dave is just ready to music instantly But that sort of rat hole that we fell down there actually leads me to another question like what factors lead to bad audio Because we're talking about different points In the sort of recording process or even post-production where things can go bad I mean Jane you talked about a buzz now you're saying you're removing that every time Where's it coming from? Why haven't you fixed it? Right exactly. I mean, I think it comes. I'm not sure if it comes from my mic or if it's coming from I'm using Skype and Call recorder if it's coming in that way, but yeah, every time I'm pulling this out and I haven't figured out what it is yet So it's easy enough for me and one click to strip it out. It's tiny, you know, but it's good It's good that you can strip it I mean sometimes it can be like crazy stuff like a light bulb like the CFL Or your microphone being too close to the monitor can have some like electromagnetic interference, but I mean You're saying it's easy to strip out because what I'm thinking is ground loop and ground loops are absolutely the worst thing Possible to remove like that's what you want to make sure you don't have but if you're getting rid of it That's fine, but ideally you would find the source. So, you know, if you ever have some spare time It's definitely go around and like unplug. Okay. I mean you only have USB microphone. So right that's harder to test But move the microphone around it could be something in the environment. I mean, yeah, that's true Maybe it's a light bulb or like a power strip or something like that Yep, it could be a lot of times USB The computer itself can cross a little bit of ground loop because there's a lot of stuff going on inside a computer I had a weird power kind of desk and the computer was at the bottom and then you had a shelf and then a place for your monitor and It took me a long time to figure it because I had this I had this hum Uh-huh, and then until the one day I'm listening in headphones and I picked the microphone off the desk And what it was is the computer being in the desk. Yeah, it vibrated the whole desk and once I put It went right up to stand into the microphone So I ended up just getting a towel and sticking it under the mic Mouse pad a good old-fashioned those foam mouse pads right Fantastic yet that happens a lot hard drives inside, you know We have iMacs that are all-in-one solutions to sit on the desktop Your microphone stand or your microphone just bees right there and it can come up It'll come up through the desk and right into The audience you're right I can't wait to try that because I'm recording some more tomorrow So I'm gonna see if that doesn't I don't hear it now which is so there's another weird thing I hear that usually I would pick that off, but um, well, maybe it's because I'm stacked on all these boxes This is another pro tip here There you go Doing what she has to do to get the good audio, which Not expensive solution there, right? I mean, I do have audio stands I have like a pile of equipment over there, but this is my favorite little like quick setup. So it sounds fantastic. So, uh, so, uh, let's see Bangs in the chat says I have a ceiling fan that generates 120 Hertz hum. So I mean, it's weird stuff like that I talk a lot about You know, it's it's oftentimes before what's going on before you hit record Like if you can get that straightened out That's mostly where you're where you're going to affect the audio the most It's all about getting it clean and then you can do anything you want. So when I asked about what factors lead to bad audio I don't know Tyler. Can you think of anything else? I mean anywhere along the chain before Before it gets in the microphone after it gets put into an mp3 file I have dozens, but I'm gonna one I'm gonna pick on but I see because I again I hear it happen pretty often is just a loud noise floor Which I think google filters out pretty well like right now I don't think any of us can only hear because google's just stripping out the The silence is in between for one thing which is when it'll really come up most of the time And also just kind of doing some processing that tries to reduce What you can hear through it, but if if none of that processing happens in post A lot of people will end up just having a hiss that just can really last through the whole thing and worse yet Can be if they add a noise gate a very strong noise gate without removing the noise So as they speak you can hear this big noise swoosh in and then it kind of washes away as they stop talking And especially live events that's something I hear live podcasters have a big problem with because I think they're also recording in an unfamiliar environment So you'll hear a lot of room noise and then it goes dead silent and then it comes back in and it can be so distracting And um when you're when you're in a room and it's controlled like right now My fan I can hear my fan spinning up on my laptop and that kind of fan sound in Audition, which is is what I use. It's very Easy to remove that just a few clicks. I don't know if What else does that just logic have that kind of uh? I mean it depends on what filter you're using to do that. What are you saying? No noise removal? Okay And noise noise Yeah, and and the noise removal in audacity. Um, there's a plug-in for that It's it's actually I used to use that over When I used in an apple of soundtrack pro. I thought the audacity went did a better job, but um, you know tyler You just got that rx. I think you bought that and it's amazing at least it is amazing I wish we were before that sale. No, so did I hope somebody else caught it on that sale Are you using it already? Yeah, I use it and I I got it on the sale so every like, you know black friday cyber monday They put that on sale and it's just like this fly five plug-in pack But there's one plug-in called dialogue de noise from isotope and I'll put that in the I'll put them It's not that much even when it's not on sale. Um, but it has this thing called dialogue de noise And it's basically a noise removal, but I'm telling you it's so much better than everything else And it's dead simple like you don't have to know anything about it'll auto do it for you And when I use it, I'm like this This is why in some cases Other people's audio is better because there are some really damn expensive plug-ins that I'm never going to purchase That make it as easy as this makes this so this is not very hard It's better than noise removal that you get from audition or anything else because you push that to a certain point It sounds like you're underwater. It gets all warbly. I've pushed this thing way far and it just it's magic So it's like a separate app wait tell me it's a plug-in for like, you know, it goes into like audition Would it go into audacity too? Yeah I said don't work about destiny. That's great. Yeah, because it's like a it's like a It's I can't think of the name of it, but it's Yes, yes, now I'm now I'm looking vst. Yes. Okay. You'll need to put all that in the notes This is the first time I've ever taken notes Wow I think also next next black friday I'm gonna get the so the one we got is it's 150 dollars usually and I got it for 30 dollars Next black friday. Yeah, amazing But each plug-in gets quite a bit more expensive I think then there's a pro and there's a studio version and the pro is I think 500 dollars The studio is a thousand. It really ramps up But I might just keep adding into every black friday because the the tools they stack on especially in the top one. They do things like not just Static noise removal that's consistent throughout the voice recording, but they can remove background noise as well So in the examples, there's coffee shop recordings and like field recordings and they can really strip out Anything that isn't the vocals and it still does that amazing job So that's one of those times where I can hear in other people's work When the you can sometimes you can hear the money being right, you know paying off Yeah, and this tool this tool is amazing It gets frustrating when you start because you are trying to figure out everything And and sometimes and you hear these like better produced podcasts and most of the time It's just they have the knowledge and the space and the gear That's a little different than yours But sometimes they have the tools that cost a lot of money because you I have I have frustrated me. I'm like, why is their skype so much cleaner than and they've cleaned it up with tools that I just can't Afford like this is one thing, you know, we talked about the hiss and it going away You know, if you have a skype guest for me I can never pull up skype and not get a lot of hiss from it And I hear other skype. I hear other interviews on skype And I'm like, why does that sound so good? And and I think it's it's just a matter of you get what you get when you pull up skype half the time Obviously, there's some things you can do to optimize it But if you try to clean up that too much, it can sound weird Also, if you drop it out when you're talking and they're not there Then you get the thing that like tyler's talking about where it's just completely noticeable Um, you know, Dave, what are can you think of any other factors that lead to bad audio? The phone anytime the phone's involved. I know we talked about that with guests. It's okay But I hear people that try to do a podcast over the phone um In just bandwidth, you know, there are sometimes I feel bad because It's not that somebody can't afford The bandwidth in some cases just not there sometimes you live in a place where they everybody thinks everybody has the internet And I remember once I got interviewed by a really nice guy in South Africa And he just said look where I'm at we have horrible internet And so it's going to break off about every, you know, so-and-so when he goes so I'll call you back I'll tell you where you're off and we'll just pick up from there and I'm like And sure enough probably like 10 times I'd be in the middle Of an answer and all of a sudden I hear beep, you know, and I'm like and he'd call me right back It's like, sorry, let's pick it up from here and we would just it was just he set the stage like this is what's going to happen It's okay. We'll get through it and and you know, we made it through so it was You know, you kind of do what you want to do. I know Gabe in the chat room says with the audacity and also with Audition You know, you have to sample the noise and then you can move it out and he says he actually records about 10 seconds of room tone Or the sample just so he has something to go in and and grab Yeah, there's usually always a dead spot at least where you can grab the noise and sometimes, you know In the movies when you're doing video I mean they do you record room tone to actually Put noise in to your recording people think that's weird But like Tyler's mentioning like when you drop it out when it's there and then it's gone. It's there. It's gone That's when it's noticeable, you know So your podcast there may be a situation where a noise floor of some type is actually beneficial to you Um, you know, if you do have to put in a track, you know again in that situation where I record in theaters I I put a I put a shotgun microphone Stage right or left and I point it up and over the crowd and it gives me crowd ambient noise And if I want to put noise gates on my hosts where it drops out You're going to hear that over five microphones But if I lay in that sort of subtle crowd audience noise and it's okay because people know we're recording in the theater You want to hear that crowd that sort of gives you that nice level continuous sound and Technically there's some noise there, but it actually works better than not having it So if you think of any time you've seen a stand-up comedian, it would be very strange if it went perfectly silent As soon as they stop talking. Yeah, so just having that small bit I think doing it live is the most important time. Yeah to add that kind of yeah, Dave add in some noise for us Would you because this is Hey in that example Dave that you're mentioning, you know in his case I would you know, I would work harder to try to get double-enders going right I would have you record your audio and me record my audio and that way You take you remove if your internet is the issue You can still connect or maybe you're using phones or something Remove that if you can remove the issue and I think in most of these cases That's what you want to do if you know the issue try to overcome it try to mitigate it by removing it You know getting around it in a double-ender You only need the internet to communicate and hear the questions And you're recording on your own side and then you sync that in post So you might do a little more work, but it's totally worth it. It'll give you that better audio, right? Yeah, that's where a ringer or zen caster. You can use an app for it Yeah, or like you said just just connect over the phone and yeah have the phone one in here in the microphone And yeah, you'd be fine. Yeah Jane Yeah, see what else do I have in here? um When is your audio Good enough like what? What makes you not? I don't know. I'm trying to think you record audio. It sounds like you know what you're doing So you don't have to I know what I'm doing like this much I've heard your podcast sounds good I have an example of good enough In fact, I'm going to do one here in a couple weeks where I solicit my audience to to chime in on a question And some people are kind of basy some people are not And if I wanted to obsess over my audio I could go in and eq everybody so everybody sounded more or less the same I ain't got that kind of time and I go in and I run it through level later Or I'll run it through a phonic to get rid of the hiss If something's really awful I'll go in and maybe cut down on some of their bass or something like that But for the most part You know, it's as good as I can know what it's good enough and I was talking With somebody once in an event and they said yeah, those are you know those needy cued and I was like Yeah, I just don't have the time but you're right. I probably should eq those but um, that person was an audio engineer. Yeah He's the only person you heard it. Yeah, and I was like two other day Yeah, so that you have to always remember that your audience is listening through audience years not not podcaster years well And I started thinking about that lately too that I it's been a few Months where I happen to be editing at home mostly and I read like my my bigger headphones Are at the office and then I just have earbuds at home And I've been editing with my earbuds and I went back and started relistening to stuff for my bigger headphones And started feeling kind of guilty for being so lazy. I mean I kept thinking like everybody just listens on earbuds Anyway, they're listening through their phone speaker. Nobody can hear it but It really is helpful to use They don't have to be very good headphones But loud sound isolating headphones that really give you the full presence of say If if you're ever editing out parts like you edit out a cough or something You can accidentally just cut the breath so that the cut is too transparent And that's something that's easy to miss when you're listening through earbuds instead of through proper headphones So that's a time lately that I thought I was doing good enough And in retrospect that I wasn't good enough So I've gone back to trying to always use proper headphones when i'm editing myself This is where kind of having a podcast buddy for lack of a better phrase can come in handy I just did on the podcast review show. This guy was getting really creative. He was doing a history show I think he's all of maybe 23 or something like that He was kind of adding in a little attitude here and there But he did things in the background And I think sometimes we're the worst especially if we're mixing in sound effects and music and things like that And because he had made the sound effects and the music they were way too up in the mix Because i'm sure he's like look I worked hard on that noise. I want to make sure it's heard and it's like Yeah, we definitely heard it because we couldn't understand what you were saying anymore I think sometimes if you can have somebody that will listen to your show And then talk about it like you're not in the room That's always great to have You just made me think of one. Oh go ahead. No that I was going to ask you a question. So Oh, go ask. Okay. So you made me think of one that I just did today. So I interviewed this Really cool dad whose son has a heart defect and he has this Really popular instagram where he's tracking all this stuff But at one point about halfway through I started hearing this like clicking noise and I thought he was hitting his mic chord And sometimes I don't like to interrupt the flow and tell them, you know, it's time But and then it kind of kept going on And it got too far where I knew that it was going to be so much to edit out So I kind of left it well at the end he told me The whole time at that point he was playing football catch ball catch with his son Who's like for to keep him busy while I was on the show So I'm like, well, at least I can say that to the listeners like when you get to halfway through and you start hearing it Because I don't know how to edit it out It's like within every single answer, you know, it's the whole time that goes right That's perfect goes into my question because I was wondering how do you know when to stop editing and just publish? Because some people will fall down the editing hole that they'll have our interview and It takes them eight hours to produce every podcast and so and this can be difficult People want to remove every um and uh or like in your case Maybe they decided they didn't know that story and they said, uh, man, I gotta figure how to get that out of there It's super distracting, you know, how how much editing do you do? And then how do you know like when it's time to just be done Yeah, for me I have a um I probably edit about an hour for each episode and the episodes are an hour long so I listen back to the entire thing and I actually listen like when I'm doing crazy things like on the bike or something at the Gym or in the you know in the car and I just take notes of where I want to make changes So you're mostly editing for content. You're not it. Are you not are you not dealing with the ums and all Are you leaving all the ums and alls and all that awkward stuff in there? Yeah, I used to take out my own ums and ass, but now I leave them all and I got better at not saying it as much So, um, I do leave all but I just say Live is different live is different So I leave them I leave a lot of that in there's only when I do have to do massive editing for something like that Like I just did one recently where The person I was interviewing took long pauses before he would answer I had to go squeeze that down because even I was though because they're super easy because it's just I know I see the block. I know that was so much easier But right I don't do a lot of that kind of um content editing. It's more About if I hear something glitchy I'll edit that out or if I hear um Like if there's something there just actually it might have already figured this out mostly I'm editing out when I'm talking too much Like wait, I talked too much. This isn't about me and I'd go back and put it that out I do that because I'm talking to the person. It's a conversation Right. I want an interview. So a lot of times I'm I'm giving them kind of a me too story Like I did and I'm like, hey, I did the same thing and did you know that so well That's fine, but I'm going to take that out of the the finished product It's like other I'm here to spotlight my guests not You know show off much. I know or whatever. So that's always something I do And that is a true story. That is mostly what I edit out is myself Nice speaking of audio issues. I mean, I'm noticing tonight like the hangouts is not enjoying us stepping on each other So when that happens, this is a skype issue too So this is something you can think about when you're recording via skype If you are actually recording the skype part not doing double ender when you talk over the top of someone else And that's hard not to do in a conversation. It's a little easier here because we can visually see each other So you get those verbal cues, but you know, you have better audio on skype generally if you do if you leave the video off but You know when we're step when we say something and someone else comes in It basically cuts off one person decides it can't handle that and I'm hearing it here Whatever, I mean, it's not killing the content. You know, I didn't bring it up to be like, hey, everybody Don't talk unless you talk to you know, I mean, it's it's just what it is in this case and this show I mean, we're talking one of the reasons I'm able to do this show is because post like production is minimal I mean we use this there is no intro music. We I literally put this into the editor I do do a little I'll do some of clean up on my own audio Because I can't help myself and then but I have to you know, every all the Yes, or you guys are all on a mixed track and so I give it some basic eq and and I just push it out the door It just goes unless I know there was like we had some weird connection issue and there's just a big gap in there I will take that out. But otherwise Roundtable's not edited for content ever other than just big technical problems And I don't want the audience have to sit there the way you had to sit there during live So I'll get that out of there. Um, but that's that's it. There is almost no Post-production in terms of like arms and oz and and so this show is a lot more raw And that's actually what it's supposed to be, you know in this case I think it lends something to this show because this show is just a hey, let's jump on the microphone Let's just have a conversation. So it goes to it whereas other shows. I have or I would say more produced More polished in product Dave you do a million shows How much editing are you doing? You know, I mean school podcasting that has a lot of editing. I you have a lot of segments a lot of segments I Um, I'm better at it now because I I have more notes to start I've learned that lesson. I still ever now and then think I can do it and I'll go in with no bullet points And you know when I'm recording it for the third time. I'm like, you know, let's just write down some bullet points because I go all over the place I don't I used to obsess over Transition music, you know, does this does this country twang go with the theme of you know microphones over $200. I'm like now It's just like I need music here go to my music folder. This will work fine in out, you know, that whole line yard So I don't go as crazy I've also learned if you're doing anything with sound effects Man, if I learned this lesson you will spend 45 minutes looking for the world's perfect drum roll Or you can just go to audio jungle net and buy one for three bucks and it takes about two minutes use code Dave Jackson. Yes So that's something that I don't and I I will catch myself doing that looking for the the favorite Lightning strike or something like that. I'm like, you know what? Let's just go buy one. This is ridiculous So yeah, that that can be a huge huge time suck for sure and uh, let's see in the chat game says I leave the consistent level Job to alphonic and alphonic.com you can two hours free That's excellent. Like you don't want to do this post production stuff. It does a lot of stuff for you The key is if you can record things Pretty well, like like I said, just clean and consistent Um, then you just throw it through alphonic and it does a lot of great things for you So there are other options to do things if you don't want to learn You know post production per se, but you know that is definitely a place where you can get to that part And and your audio can get worse because again noise removal people will over compress They'll do stuff trying to make their audio better and instead they they make it worse But tyler, I you know, I can't leave out We've got two video people here at least that I know of jayna. Maybe you do video, but I'm a video guy And uh video or podcast too. I feel like that's my t-shirt. Oh, that's gonna be it's gonna say Video or podcast too. Don't steal that. Nobody's seeing but we already got it. We already got it I want to make it first It's copyrighted copyright real estate 2017 Um, I will sue you Dave Tyler a good audio in in video is a little tougher You can't put this like nice microphone right in your face per se depends on depends on the video I guess but you know anything if you're doing a video podcast We do generally youtube and it's expensive to do video podcasts that as well, but What's the difference is there I mean you you got the high up your 40s right in the face for your for your for your audio podcast Um good audio, but is it harder to do video audio for video? Uh-oh we lost tyler He's not again. He's not on mute. I don't know why Oh, no, we'll come back. He's completely gone now Okay, is it just me Is it just me or would there be like the super dream of having like a super pro person Edit one of my shows and just show me what it's like. That sounds great. There is time What do you mean? You mean you want to hire someone to Edit or someone to show you? Well, actually we'll probably show me would be better because then I can do it again And then I wouldn't be depressed because it's one time But yes, I would love to do that and actually that's the thing My intro I had an audio engineer do the intro and it sounds a little bit different Like there's just a little bit raspier and I can't figure out how to make it happen And I don't have contact with that first since I'm like, I've got to figure this out I need to find someone who can listen to a and listen to b and go with this is what you need to do Yeah, and that can be tough. I mean depending on what they how they process the day can be tough I know it's tricky. It's very tricky So are you back to me? You know, I hope so. Yeah, I didn't change anything in between. I promise I also promise my podcasts don't sound like I can't wait to hear how bad I sound and so I'm sorry for ruining this episode everybody I was going to say with video It just generally does sound worse You a good video mic You're always facing extra challenges like a lav mic that you put On a person if you kind of want to hide it isn't a really non-optimal spot. It's usually Kind of lower on the chest So the chin is blocking the the sound input to it So there's been times where I've tried using a lav mic to record a podcast and next to it are other real podcast microphones you're speaking directly into and there's so much more clarity out of A mic that is in the right place And it's not even all about the actual microphone lav mics can sound great But the placement of them sacrifices a lot and the same thing happens with a boom mic Typically, you can't boom it in which you know, that's just a mic on a stick You can't bring it in nearly as close as a podcast mic So, you know, it'll be between two or five feet away because depends on what the width of your shot is So you just can't get that same proximity that becomes the biggest issue with all of it is really proximity And as you move a mic further away the sound of your room starts to matter a lot more like I'm in a cement room That's very echoey So in my youtube videos, I sound quite a lot worse because of that extra distance That distance gives the room a chance to reverberate a lot more So in a podcast, I can get rid of a lot of a lot of that by bringing the mic right up to my to my mouth and that helps So there's a lot more challenges in video because of hiding it But people are also a bit more forgiving with it as long as your your audio is good I Find people have a bit lower expectations because they're not listening as closely They're also watching or engaged on more levels. There's something about the visual when you can see the room Someone's in yeah, it lens so you're like, ah, it's a little echo but it it fits because look I mean I can see her in a cement room and not that you know Like that you know audio, but you're like, oh, he's in a cement room. It's gonna sound like reverb It's just something about seeing it and it just goes with totally a simple example Is like if you see somebody standing at a traffic light and there's I you're more forgiving of hearing them Than if it was an audio only experience, but why do I have to listen to all this garbage noise? I you know So a context adds a lot of what you're willing to accept. Yeah, yeah, sure Awesome. Well, what else I don't know if I anything almost on my list I had one thing. Oh wait, I was gonna say when you're talking about talking over each other And and and I tried to interrupt and my mic apparently wasn't working so I can talk over you But that's again on purpose That's the main good enough that I will do in my edits Fump I usually try to go through and actually edit the whole thing I'm not removing every um, but just paying attention to each sentence. That's like, okay. That's that works But what I'll always take out even in a rush is those Either a gap where skype just has a time response Especially for a laugh if you tell a joke and there's a three second pause and the person laughs It just does not come across as authentic like you seem to hear that. Yeah, exactly and that can really kill Lamentum and it just doesn't feel natural and it's relatively a quick thing to fix and quick to spot So as long as you have multiple tracks of audio and you zoom out You can usually see where one person ended and the other person started and all those gaps are pretty visible So I try to trim all those down to virtually nothing so that there's always Consistency without gaps and then also if we're talking over each other, I'll remove the interruption So if only one per you know so that you can't tell that it happened as much as possible Yeah, and I mean there was a key element in there that if he picked it up. He said Multiple tracks, right? So this is a huge Factor and being able to I mean you can't do that if people are mixed essentially if they're recorded into like Record on something like a zoom h1 That both the people who were talking went into a stereo signal and it wasn't panned and all that garbage It would be a mix and you couldn't do what Tyler's saying necessarily and so at work I do multiple tracks all the time and two people will talk and it's okay In that case, they have a really strong connection and Skype doesn't always do that And it's easy for me to slip the audio left and right and you get to hear what each person said and that just you know That's not an audio quality issue, but it's it's a you know, just being able to Hear what people are saying and that that can change A podcast is almost always critical like what someone says you're like, oh, they're gone If it was mixed you wouldn't be able to do that. So it's funny There's also like a real life mixing that happens if you record in the same room as somebody Especially if there's reverb if it's a fully controlled room where there's no bounce Um, it's not the same thing, but if you can hear the sound of the room heavily it's much more challenging to Make like if somebody tries to interrupt and doesn't succeed You can't scoop them out because you can hear them through the other mic or sometimes you'll hear the end of the reverb Bleeding through the next sentence. So when people are together You actually can edit it much less than if they're in totally independent rooms You can be a lot more aggressive about what you cut out. Yeah, it is a lot It's so tricky when you get multiple people in a room together because you get those bleed you get the Well the bleeding going through the other microphones. It's like a live musical performance Yeah, is that an example of of good enough though? Because I know we all would love to have separate tracks when you can But is that a case where like sometimes you just got to go with the stereo and you You have everybody adjust their volume when you first start out and you this is not I mean, I'm separate from you guys the way I'm recording here, but that's it like I can't separate any of you and so you know It we joined the hangout 15 minutes before we go live ideally and uh And when I work on those things like as we just have a casual conversation I'm trying to balance those levels and you know, I'm telling Tyler his mic is cutting it out You know, you work on those things hopefully a few minutes before and you find solutions So we found a solution and I'm trying to balance that audio doesn't have to be perfect But use your ear your ear is going to be fantastic And if you just need to get close and it'd be perfect and that'll allow you to go in a post-production Or use something like a phonic and it'll do the auto leveling for you. But um, yeah Take a few minutes before you record and and try to balance your side versus the other side A lot of people have this, you know, that's their primary thing when they talk about skype and issues They say my audio is fine if the guest is so much lower Yeah, um, and and if they haven't done separate tracks It's going to be harder and separate track is easy When it's one on one because you can turn any mixer into a multi channel by panning left and panning right Get in touch if you're wondering about that But there's skype recording software and that separates the tracks for you So there's really no reason not to do it Um, and it'll it'll save the day in a lot of cases Unless you have like right now you have four people talking this Each person you add starts to stack the complexity. I'm saying one on one Which is the case for most podcasts. They do a one-on-one interview Anytime you go past two people it gets it gets ugly And those are the only emails I get because I'm telling you the one-on-ones easy to figure out So when people can't figure out how to separate More than two people they email me and like it's these complex setups and they want to do these crazy stuff And I'm like, oh my god. Yeah, you're gonna need a lot different Ray, I really think you should start recording roundtables at a quadruple ender where we all send you Giant wayfiles and you see come on I try that Oh, it sounds like a nightmare on my I think on my youtube channel does this thing called soundation It was a plugin that hangouts had and it's sort of it was for music Look, this isn't hard like why there isn't a plugin that doesn't do this for me that it should record Everyone's audio should record to their own machine Totally if I was a coder if I was about this would already exist Um, yes, trust me when I started the roundtable being who I am and wanting good sound I tried to make that happen But no, and this is fine. It's good enough It's totally good enough the roundtable is great. I mentioned that I'm recording Recording I'm recording You said a good enough percent. I won't edit that self-editing real time. Um, I'm doing it in studio because What we're capturing here in real time your audio coming to me live And my audio of course going to recorder is so much better than what it's going to be when hits the archive and goes to youtube Because youtube's gonna compress it and they're going to kill the audio. They're gonna Yeah, I don't understand why they're so aggressive about that. Yeah, it doesn't make doesn't have to be that way They host 8k video tyler and but they can't give us like 320 kilobits a second Yeah, give me 64 bit mp3s. Yeah makes no sense. But um, you know, that's how youtube's staying alive, I guess but uh, yeah, so Just doing that one thing gives me so much better audio than if I you know, just ripped out the archive. However Things happen recordings crash And I have ripped out the archive and put it in the feed because the content's good It's not horrible that audio So do what you can take what you get publish it and move on like always improve as long as I think you're always Making a concerted effort to improve Um, you know, you may not need to you get to a point where like that's good enough, right? So All right, well We could probably keep going on but I think we're at that point I'll let people go work on their audio Yes, actually produce Some some content, but I'll thank you for Coming on the round table of course and then let us know where we can find your podcast Your great sounding podcast and uh, some of the people will come out and check you out. I'm sure so Dave Jackson As always thanks for joining us your check is in the man. Yeah, I I have to throw in one last bumper sticker Please um, and I it's from dan. It's from hall of fame podcaster dan class He said when you go to a comedy club and there's three different comedians and one was okay and one just killed one was like They all used the same mic And so it's not always if you're thinking about upgrading your microphone Your microphone is probably good enough. So and you can find me over at school of podcasting.com Yeah, it's tricky because you know, there were people who will hear this round and they'll think oh my god These people they're so focused and like it's not about the audio quality It's not about your microphones about the content. Yeah, sure. Whatever that's at it is that's primary But if people, you know, can't hear right well, then they never receive that content. So it's a blend, right? It's not something to ignore. It's also not something to obsess over For sure. And you know, we're gonna that is our job here that we get paid handsomely for to go down rabbit holes You pay so much. Matter of fact, I'm just gonna hang it. This is the last round Jane thank you so much for joining us on your first round table Well, thank you for having me and and now that I want now that I've been to one I feel like I have to have a bumper sticker. So um, what I was going to say is that When you look at not good enough to post and like the elite, you know, velvety sound of npr There's so much room in between So there's so much room to play and learn and grow and that's the coolest thing that I love about podcasting myself And you can find me over at glisteningparticles.com Where I talk with lots of crazy people that are really cool and amazing. So come on and check it out They're not really all crazy just That's mostly me That's a good way to give you a little listen though. You're like, I gotta hear crazy stuff Right exactly tyler. Thanks. That makes two times in the book and you know, we've had challenges each time but Next time Six microphones lined up ready to go. This is how tyler gets back on the round. I get what you're doing I get what you're doing Yeah, so next time next time it'll be better Yeah, well, you know, thanks a lot for having me again. I really enjoyed it and um I wanted to throw just a random recommendation out there that I've really been enjoying this week is forecast if anybody hasn't used it from Marco Arment's forecast If if anybody uses overcast to listen to their podcast it is his podcast preparation tool So it does encoding and chapter markers and all the Uh metadata that you want in a really smart way. So I in three um So I started checking that out and then uh myself I just launched a new podcast two days ago called Go to stelman podcast.com And you can hear it and that's just like personal like I just want to talk about whatever I want to talk about when I want to But I also have a photography podcast called cameras or whatever Very cool. Yes. I did see that came out. We could we could actually go down another 20 minutes of the audio quality Conversation and how he uses the lame encoder, which is kind of lame, but does that matter versus fronhofer? I actually probably I've kind of thought that it does but I think there's some arguments that it doesn't so you know what? I trust Marco. He does good stuff. And so yeah, you should definitely check that out. It may Speed up your workflow because the key is like this stuff is hard It's hard to produce on a weekly basis or a consistent basis and you know, if you spend All your time trying to perfect your audio or something else You'll quit and that's just that's not the better alternative, right? So good enough publish move on produce another thing and sign up podcastersroundtable.com slash guest will get you on around here And uh, that's it. We will see you next time wave. Goodbye. See you. All right. Thank you