Adding the Finishing Touches to Your Podcast Audio

Following my previous video on mixing your podcast, Allison went away and did her homework and mixed her intro and outro with a piece of audio recorded on SAM (Skype Answering Machine).

It was pretty good for her first try (and I don’t want to sound patronizing when I say that).

A few things I noticed:

• the answering machine audio sounds a bit distorted. That may be because I talk too loud (I like to call it projection) but if it’s possible to lower the recording level slightly that might help.
• the answering machine audio would probably benefit from a little noise reduction to eliminate the hiss in the background
• the levels need to be evened out a little bit

As explained in this video, the best way to get a good, even level is to record at the correct level right from the beginning. If there are still obvious discrepancies  then the volume levels should be evened out using the amplification feature of Audacity before mixing the audio.

This video shows how to do this (on the already mixed audio) and then shows some other features that can help make your audio sound more professional.

I would stress that there is a fine line between enhancing your audio and over-doing all the effects.

Here is the original audio file Allison mixed together:

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And this is it after changes have been made to the amplification, compression and normalization (you should be aware that the 2nd piece of audio has been downsampled to a bit rate of 96 from 128 so the overall quality will also be slightly lower):

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This podcast is so small that downsampling to 96kbps may not be necessary.

Note also that Allison has done her ID3 tags homework so you will see the details of the podcast in the mp3 player.

(And my sincerest apologies to everyone in the West Country for my terrible attempt at the accent!)

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