Podcast Producer Course
Audio editing software
Adobe Podcast (web based)
The Adobe Podcast is an easy to use web based platform. The system is in development as we speak so it’s free to use if you have an Adobe Account that you can create for free. (https://podcast.adobe.com/)
Adobe podcast lets you clean up your audio files and even audio with a lot of background noise will sound like it was made with a studio microphone. But the more noise there is, the more you can hear a bit of micro “flutter” in the voices when it’s cleaned up. But the results are very impressive, and you can even make speech from the built-in microphone in a laptop sound decent.
Adobe Podcast also features a recording platform where you can upload or speak your audio into the system. If the audio is in English it will be transcribed automatically and you can then edit single words or even delete them. You can remove unwanted breaks and pauses to make the audio flow better.
You can combine different audio files using the text editor and you can add music files to your podcast either as background or as “skillers”, and there are a lot of music samples available in the system.
When you are done you can download the full audio and publish it.
Audacity
Here we will focus on the cheap versions, the most popular being Audacity because it is probably still the best free full featured audio editing software out there.
https://www.audacityteam.org/
Audacity is an old program that is being kept updated, but the age shows a bit. You can edit multiple channels and in this way combine your voice over audio with real audio and interviews and put some music in between. Audacity takes a little practice to use, but you should be able to learn it pretty quickly. The main difference between Audacity and other more expensive editors is that Audacity edits are “destructive” - which means that if you cut an audio file you can’t drag it longer and find the rest anymore. So you have to know what you are doing and make frequent backups.
Audacity has made a full range of tutorials for learning how to use the program - you can find them here:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tutorials_for_audacity.html
Also check this video out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw9nkEHQ5B8
Adobe Audition
One of the most popular audio editors on the market is Adobe Audition, and no! It's not free.
But if you have access to the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite with all the usual programs like Photoshop and Indesign, you actually also have access to Audition.
Audition is also a multi channel audio editor with lots of advanced editing functions. And the noise reduction filters are quite good and can save a lot of your mistakes.
If you have access to Audition there are tons of tutorials like this one on youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F50Xyxlp2kA
Garageband
If you have a (recent) iPad you probably have noticed that Garageband is installed from the start.
Garageband is meant for recording music on your iPad, and it is a very cool program for doing just that, but you can also use it to record and edit spoken work. In this short tutorial you will learn how to turn off the metronome since you won't want that to be active, and then you are set to record.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf3mNn-AqY8
Unlike Audacity, Garageband’s edits are not destructive, which means that you can drag any clip shorter and longer at will, while the original files will still be there even though you only need a few seconds of audio from them.
Garageband is very easy to get to know, and could be a “dark horse” for the inexperienced podcast producer.
Tips and tricks
Your real audio clips from interviews and background audio may be very different from your studio voice over. Be sure that the transitions between the clips are not too rough and sudden. You can use a few tricks to even out the biggest differences.
| Normalizing Most editors have a feature that will normalize your audio files. This will calculate the average audio level for the whole file and then adjust the different parts of the audio, so they seem to have the same level. This is a quick way of adjusting your audio project, so that the different parts are equally loud. But it will also boost the background noise in the quiet parts. You may have to work on those bits individually so that they don’t get too much static noise. |
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Noise reduction
You should use the noise reduction filter on the problematic parts of the audio and not the whole project. Noise reduction will always muffle the speech and you want that to be as clear as possible. Some editors like Audition can analyse each clip and find the perfect wave match for the background noise at that particular clip. Then it can apply noise reduction based on that specific noise profile. This is a good way of reducing background noise without sacrificing too much of the quality of the clip.
Record the ambient noise in the room
Another trick is to record the room where you are interviewing or recording when no one is speaking. Every room has its own ambient noise profile that is impossible to recreate in the studio. If you have a couple of minutes of ambient noise you can edit that into the project to mask the clips and cuts in the other audio clips. You can even add new questions or rephrase them in the studio and make them seem like they were recorded in the same session.
Cut the pauses
Normally a pause is a good way of keeping focus in a conversation. But in a podcast you might not want all the pauses that are in your recording. You can edit them out quite easily in the editor and you can also edit whole sentences and different “takes” out and only use what you need.
Don’t be afraid to listen to your own edits, and think about making them even more fast paced, and better to listen to.
Pro tip (Adobe Podcast)
If you decide to use Adobe Podcast - all these features are available here. The noise reduction and the normalising and ambience can all be done automatically, and the pauses can be removed manually in the text editor.
