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FeedsQuick Guide to Mastering Your Podcast using Audacity
∞ | July 28, 2006 | Category: Music, Wordpress
This post aims to provide a simple and fast set of steps non-audiophiles can perform to improve almost any
speech recording; especially recordings that were made by running an average microphone into a sound card.
I’m using Audacity for this walkthrough as it is available
for a wide range of operating systems and comes at a bargain price.
I am not an Audio Engineer. There are better tools and techniques available. I suggest these because they’re fast, free and easy.
Steps
- Open the uncompressed version of your recording (try not to start with an mp3 or similar)
- Select All (
Ctrl/Cmd + A) - Effect > Normalize…
- Tick
Remove any DC offset
only. - Press Enter
- Tick
- Effect > EQ…
- Add one point just before the 100Hz marker and one at the 100Hz marker. Drag the left-most point all the way down to -24dB.
- Add one point at 1000Hz, one at 2000Hz and one at 3000Hz. Drag the 2000Hz point up slightly.
- Add one point at the 10,000Hz marker and one just after. Drag the right-most point down to -24dB.
- Press Enter
- Effect > Amplify…
- If the audio was recorded at a low volume, you will want to run the Amplify effect over it to bring up the overall volume.
- Set the
New Peak Amplitude
to -0.3dB and allow theAmplification
slider to adjust itself automatically. - Press Enter
- Effect > Compressor…
- Threshold: -10dB
- ratio: 4:1
- attack and release times: 0.1s
- Press Enter
To provide an example, Stephanie was kind enough to send me a sample of a direct-to-PC recording she had made for her own podcast. Have a listen to the short before and after snippets to hear the difference for yourself.
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So what quality mp3 and other settings did you do?
*jumps* yikes! you posted!
Here’s me thinking the way to improve a podcast was to remix it into a song or two…
Get ‘em Andrew!
You know what? I’ve started using GarageBand now
HiYa -
I was just looking at your Admin/Modal mockup … clocked on WordPress category and was suprised that only this showed up.
cheers
–bentrem
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