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How to record a podcast episode?

4Podcast does not provide facilities to record your podcast episodes. But we did it quite a few times already, and read about it even more, so we've gathered a few tips to get you started.

In audio just like in video, you can fix many things with post-processing with modern sofware. But it's much easier and faster to get it right from the start. And some things cannot be fixed anyway.

To Write or not to write?

Entirely up to you. Our process is to write the content first, then record it. This has the benefit of providing us with a full transcript of the episode, which is then pasted in the episode article.

But there are many types of podcasts, and you may be conducting interviews, or host a panel: in such cases, there's no initial writing, altough having an outline and a list of questions to ask is a good idea.

Where to record?

2 things are to be avoided at all costs:

  • noisy environments
  • places with a lot of echo

Ambient noise can often be removed by processing the audio with appropriate software, but echo is a real pain to remove. And it's not always possible to remove it completely.

  • stay away from air conditioning, fridges, busy places with lots of people, unless that's what you want
  • avoid recording in a room with hard surfaces, such as concrete, or with lots of glass, these are very echo-y
  • adding furnitures, rugs, curtains, etc. can help reduce echo

What equipment to use?

With today's tech, good quality audio can be recorded with next to no equipement. If you're recording a single voice, a smartphone is enough to get started and get you some distance.

Do not use your webcam microphone, or your camera microphone: they are not designed for that and will give you a very poor quality audio.

To improve quality, once you got started and your podcast has an audience, you may want to get a bit of equipment, hardware or software, to improve your audio quality.

The microphone

You definitely do not need to spend a lot on microphones. More importantly, you need to be aware of the main types of microphones available and how to use them.

Polar pattern

The most important element is likely to be the polar pattern, which describes the way a microphone picks up sound around it.

Some microphones "listen" in all direction around them (called "omnidirectional"), while others are "focused" mostly in one direction. These use one of "cardioid", "supercardioid" or a bunch of other polar patterns.

Microphones technology

Common microphones use 2 main types of operating principles (there are more types actually). It's interesting to known about each type but not worry that much about it, as this not such an important factor for our use case.

  • Condenser microphones

These are the most common type of microphones, often cheaper for the low-end ones. They are very sensitive, and can pick up a lot of ambient noise for this reason. You should often use a condenser microphone only in a quiet environment, without any echo.

  • Dynamic microphones

Dynamic microphones are much less sensitive, and as such can be used in noisy environments. They are also less prone to picking up echo in the room in general.

Due to their lower sensitivity, they sometimes require extra amplification to get a loud-enough signal.

Which type is better?

In general, for podcasting, we'd recommend using a microphone with a cardioid polar pattern. Such microphone will pick up the sound from the front, and reject the sound from the sides and the back, which should help reduce ambient noise and echo.

Using either a dynamic or condenser microphone can be fine. Dynamic microphones being less sensitive, this may also help reduce ambient noise and in most cases, you'll need very little, if any, post-processing to get a usable audio file.

But there are many exceptions to that, and the most important factor to get good results is the "golden rule" described in the next paragraph.

The golden rule

A microphone should always be as close as possible to the speaker's mouth.

Regardless of whether you use a condenser or dynamic microphone, by far the best way to avoid surrounding noise and echo is to locate microphone really close to the speaker's mouth.

Ideally, you'll have the microphone only 1-2 inches / a few centimeters away from the speaker's mouth.

In some cases, when this is not possible, using lapel (also called lavalier) microphones can be a good solution. These are small microphones that can be attached to the speaker's clothing.

Obviously, you can also have some more advanced setups with microphones placed further away from the speaker, but this will usually only work well in a quiet environment, possibly with some sound-treatment for the room.

If you're using your smartphone to record you or somebody else, the rule still applies: make sure to place the smartphone close to the speaker's mouth, or use a lapel microphone connected to the phone.

Connecting the microphone to the computer

Unless you are recording using a phone, you'll need to connect the microphone to your computer. Here as well there are 2 main options:

  • USB microphones: these microphones have integrated electronics to send the audio directly into you computer, which will see the external microphone as a regular, built-in one
  • XLR microphones: these cannot connect directly to your computer, and you'll need an audio-interface to plug the microphone into. The audio interface will then connect to your computer through USB or other connection.

There are some very good USB microphones these days, so this would likely be your preferred option to get started.

XLR microphones are often of higher quality, more professional. Later, when going up in quality, you can consider an XLR microphone which will then require an audio interface.

There are a few entry-level or mid-range microphones that can be used both as USB and XLR, preserving the option to upgrade later.

A reasonably cheap but very good quality dynamic XLR microphone + audio-interface combination is the Behringer XM8500 mic + Behringer UMC204HD audio-interface.

The recording software

Many options exist on all platforms, from free to very expensive.

It is important to understand that the software itself will not influence the quality of the recorded audio.

However, some software will be easier to use, while others may come with tools and filters to "clean up" the audio, or to add effects.

Here is a short list of software commonly used in podcasting:

We use DaVinci Resolve to record and process our podcast. It's actually a video editing software which includes a very powerful audio editor. It's available on all platforms and its extremely powerful free version is vastly enough for any audio processing.

Post-processing tips

After recording, and loading the audio file in your favorite audio editor, you should apply a little bit of post-processing to get a usable file.

There are 2 things you must always pay attention to

1 - Trim the beginning and end of the file to remove any silence, or discussion, that is not part of the episode.

2 - Normalize the audio loudness to make sure the volume is consistent throughout your podcast episodes.

Loudness normalization

A major quality factor is to make sure all your episodes have about the same audio level. There are some standard used in radio, television and the web to measure how loud some audio is, although none globally agreed upon for podcasts.

In general, you should aim for a loudness of between -16 and -20 LUFS (Loudness Units Full Scale).

Measuring and adjusting the loudness of your audio file is done by your audio software, and is called "loudness normalization".

Removing noise

If you recorded in a noisy environment, you may have some noise in your audio file. This can be removed by using a noise reduction filter. This is also a feature of your audio software and you'll have to refer to the software help to learn how to use it.