Post processing your audio podcast can be a daunting task. Where do you start? What effects do you use? How to adjust the effects once you choose them? These questions and many more like them can easily scare a podcaster away from doing any polishing of their audio podcast file.
But if you’re interested in rounding out your sound to make it better overall and don’t want to learn the tech behind doing it there’s Auphonic.com. On this episode I’m talking with Georg Holtmann, the creator of Auphonic, software for helping you get the best audio possible.
Of course the first step is to record it well. I like to say, you can’t make bad audio good, you can only make it less bad. For that reason you’ll want to make sure you have a decent microphone, a quite recording space and a few other pieces (pop filter, quite preamp, etc.) before you even think about processing your audio. The better the audio, the better the software and processing will work.
Georg will guide us through some of Auphonic’s most important features for podcasters such as audio leveling, background noise removal or reduction, hum and buzz removal and most interesting to me, a new standard in audio known as loudness normalization.
Loudness normalization and standards have arisen due, in part, to a loudness war that has been escalating in music and broadcast audio for a few decades. Fed up with wildly different audio levels from program to program, listeners complained enough that new standards and tools were created to better measure perceived loudness.
Georg and I dive into a little of the history of loudness and elaborate on why this new standard is important and specifically how these new standards are being applied to podcasting.
*Links mentioned on this episode (in order of appearance).
- Auphonic.com
- Podcasters’ Roundtable 32 – Podcasting Best Practices
Do you need a reliable host for your audio or video podcast? Consider moving your show to Libsyn.com (my chosen host) and get your first month free when you use promo code: PODCASTHELPER at checkout. If you’d like to use Blubrry to host your podcast (my other recommended host) you can get a free month by using the same promo code: PODCASTHELPER
To learn more about “loudness” standards, the history and the solution, here’s a fantastic talk.
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