Sound Better in 2025!

Sarah Burke (Voiceover)  0:01  
Music. Welcome to the podcast. Super Friends, five podcast producers from across North America get together to discuss podcasting.

Catherine O'Brien  0:13  
Hello, everybody, the podcast. Super Friends are here in 2025 to help you sound better. We have fought technical difficulties, we are fighting the cold, and we are certainly fighting some pretty questionable pop culture references. But none of that is going to stop us, because we're going to help you sound better. Podcasters in 2025 My name is Catherine O'Brien. My company is branch out programs, and I am a Podcast Producer based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Joining me is the rest of the podcast, Super Friends. We want to have some fun talking about it sounding better. But there is a serious side to podcasts are sounding good, and that is, if you if your podcast does not sound good, that is the number one reason that somebody is going to turn off your show. So although we like to take a light hearted approach to all of these things, we do know, as a podcast, people who just love podcast, not only just it's our profession and producing them, but really it is a critical issue if you're going to do a podcast. And we know, especially at the start of the year, a lot of people have, they've got that idea that's been burning in their back pocket, and this is they're going to be the year that they're going to be doing their podcast. And really, right off the bat, they have got to sound good. So we're gonna go and talk a little bit about those things, about sounding good. And let's go to you, Johnny, since you are so passionate about sounding good as a podcast, what is your number one tip for the person who is launching a podcast they're just getting going, what is the one thing you want people to know before they hit that publish button on episode one?

Johnny Podcasts  1:40  
Well, the nice thing about why, like, this topic is so broad, so sounding good can mean a lot of different things. And I know Jack is especially excited to talk about one aspect of those. So I'll go from the technical standpoint. So the technical standpoint of sounding good, obviously, you need to have your microphone. This seems like you know, if you've been watching the show for a while, you've been hosting a show for a while. Remember, you were just once a budding podcaster. You know what? I want to start a show. Check it out. No spy.no, it's only $60 and it looks so cool. It's silver. And you bought that, and it probably sounded okay at first, and then you've leveled up a little

Jon Gay  2:22  
bit. For those that are listening to not watching, he held up the Blue Yeti microphone. Yeti microphone.

Johnny Podcasts  2:27  
So you started off, and then as your podcast progressed, you upgraded your equipment. Yada yada yada. For the people just starting out, budget is not something you have to totally worry about. There's a great The great thing about being in 2025 is technology has advanced to the point where there are great options for $50 and there are great options for $500 so what I recommend starting right out is look for you know, if my budget was $500 to start a podcast, I would spend 250 of those dollars on a sure MV seven. This microphone you're looking at right here, number one, because it gives you the ability to plug in an XLR cable if you're going to record in person for podcasts, which is always super fun, the majority of people are going to be recording podcasts remotely, over the internet, similar to what you're seeing right now, if you're watching the show that also this microphone gives you USB C plug in capability. You can plug it right into your computer. You can take your laptop on the go. You can record from anywhere a high quality microphone, getting clean sound right out of the gate before you send it off to an editor, before you send it off to a producer, before you put it into your AI audio generator. Thing, getting the clean audio is the best thing you can do. First, it's really hard to make crap audio sound good. So if we can sound good out of the gate, you can bring people along to make you sound even better.

Jon Gay  3:48  
I'm going to push back on one point that Johnny just made. This is a just loving. This is

Johnny Podcasts  3:53  
a dictatorship. My, my word is law.

Catherine O'Brien  3:55  
And are you stealing Johnny's counterpoint right away? Okay? Jack, yeah,

Jon Gay  4:00  
fine. The the microphone. Johnny recommends, absolutely recommend it myself. The show MV seven is a fantastic microphone to the MV seven plus is the newest version of that. If the $250 price point that Johnny just threw out scared you, it's okay. It's a great microphone. If you can swing it by you want to make the investment buy it. But if you really are doing this on a very limited budget to start, I will say the ATR 20 100x microphone, which will run anywhere from like 60 to 70 bucks on Amazon, will sound good. The MV seven will sound great. The the ATR 20 100x will sound good. And if you got to start somewhere, start with that one. That's right,

Catherine O'Brien  4:39  
good. That's a great tip. Now, that's a good tech that we've started with the technical side. Now, jag, you wanted to share with us a point, and I have, I actually, I think I'll have a comment after you're after you're done talking about just my rant, no, not around, about just the the process, the sort of the more storytelling elements the show. A flow kinds of things. What are some of the things you would suggest to people about sounding better in 2025

Jon Gay  5:09  
it really is thinking about economy of words. I have a couple clients that I've just started with that started in 2025 where they kind of want to do a trailer first episode, and they kind of, I don't say, got all their plots on paper, but got all their thoughts into a computer with audio, and I whittled it down for them. The best thing you can do, really, is have bullet points and know where you're gonna go in your conversation. You know, Kevin made the point of the number one, tune up factor is bad audio. I 100% agree with that. The number two, tune out factor, for me, is rambling endless conversations that don't have anything to do with the podcast. You've got to hook somebody in the first 30 seconds give them a reason to stick around. We could have very easily started this conversation with David, Matt, Johnny and myself having an NFL football conversation, and we would have lost anybody who doesn't care about football and wants to hear about podcasting. Think about your listener from the other side of things, they are committing X amount of time, 15, 3060, minutes to your podcast. You want to reward them for that time. That's their time is very valuable. The only non renewable resource can it be considered their time by word economy, getting to your point and not rambling about the great new breakfast place you down the street or look at the street or look at the weather outside, because you never know when somebody's gonna listen to

David Yas  6:25  
that episode. Jack, just a counter question or whatever. If you're a well established podcast, can you earn that right? Is it possible some listeners want to hear yes,

Jon Gay  6:36  
yeah, I'd say that. I think if you've got established inside jokes with a big enough audience. I'm not talking about your audience of 10 people. I'm talking about a larger audience than that. But if you have things that are baked into the show, the i, y, k, y, k, whatever it is, if you know, you know, those are a couple easter eggs like that are certainly fine. But if you have to remember that the first impression is the first 30 seconds of your most recent episode, if somebody finds you an app or Spotify, if I'm new to your show, don't alienate me in those 30 seconds.

Johnny Podcasts  7:07  
Jack I was on a call today with another producer who and we were talking, he asked me, you know, what do you tell your clients when they say I want to get better at hosting? And oh, do your chit chat comment really kind of reminded me of that conversation. And I think there's a there's always these fine lines in podcasting where you're balancing things, and I think where you're correct is the chit chat that comes from being uncomfortable behind the mic, where you don't have a ton of reps, you're really early on, and you are sort of nervously stumbling through trying to get to the point and you just, you can't really navigate yourself. You can't navigate your way to the meat of the episode that you're trying to get to. So you're filling the time with trying to get you're just saying words so that you're getting more comfortable. I think that as you progress as a host, or you progress as someone that has reps on the mic, that chit chat becomes part of the show, and it becomes, it becomes really entertaining as you become more entertaining as a host. So you're able to, kind of to use the Trump phrase, weave in and out, of going to the topic at hand and then veering off somewhere else that's still interesting, not necessarily on topic, and then weaving our way back in there. So I think it's something that every host finds their own rhythm as they get more comfortable behind the mic.

Catherine O'Brien  8:24  
And to that point, Johnny, I think understanding that, see that that chit chat that sounds good is actually very hard to do. This is not just like, Oh, we're just, you know, we're just having a little banter and building rapport. Those are actually really hard things to do. To make it sound so easy is actually quite a skill to do, and it does take practice. I have noticed two trends that I think are fit in this category right here, and one of them is that people might be the podcast host, might be recording all of that intro banter, and might pull out a jam and in a introductory way, say, okay, you know, we first, you know, we covered a lot of our bases, and then, you know, the guests shared this little tidbit, and then bring that clip in, go back into a more proper intro, and then into the actual heart of the show, the the meat of the of what the episode's all about. I think that can be very effective, because you do have that time where it's just we now we're behind hot mics and we're talking and we're getting all those little nervous pieces out, but then you you're still able to capture those gems so and also, I like that narrative technique of saying, like, here I am as the host. I'm bringing you in, sort of behind the scenes. We had this great conversation. Here's a little gem, and then let's get on to the episode. I think that that actually really works. Another trend, and I know we've, we've talked about this before, is just getting right into the show. And I think that especially in earlier podcasting days, since we know that people have their four. Their attention is highest right at the beginning is there was a lot of preamble, preamble, pre roll, sponsored by all those kinds of things, just tons before you actually get to the episode. And I see a lot of really very successful podcasts have dropped that they're getting right to the good stuff off the bat. And there's plenty of time later into the episode to cover the How did you get here? How did you get started? Take it back to those, those early days, whatever. But getting to the good stuff fast pays gives a little investment to your listeners. Right off the bat,

Matt Cundill  10:36  
can I throw in that if you're listening to this and you don't really understand, oh, how do I make it quick? And how do I get into it? And maybe you think you're already doing it by your intro. I think that first 30 seconds to a minute, if you're just reading the LinkedIn bio, if you're reading a resume, and a lot of people are, I think you need to that's this is what we're talking about. We're talking about being a better host. We're talking about connecting with the listener in if you need to give an intro, and you probably should give an intro to your guest and why the person is here, you need to give them the hook for on why in 45 seconds, why they need to listen to the next 45 minutes, you need to formulate that. And you know, this also goes to audio promos. And it's a lesson that I was taught because I had to learn how to do audio promos all over again. It's not just, Well, this is what the show is about. And I really hope you listen in this episode. You're going to learn the following. We're going to dive into this, that and the other thing. And those are the three things you need in order to and my guest is so and so. Who will tell us how? Hello,

Catherine O'Brien  11:45  
yeah, David, you've got a lot of you've got a lot of showman elements. Do you have any comments about getting to the good stuff sooner rather than later?

David Yas  11:54  
Yeah? I mean, a lot of it's been covered. But I would add that as far as the the bio of the guest goes, Uh, spot on to two sentences. Max, you know, here, here's Joe Blow. He is an entrepreneur. He's He's launched, uh, dozens of companies, and he's going to tell us about his journey. Just, just that is really enough. You're going to get into the rest of this stuff later. I think one of the other sins that we commit is in asking questions. We sometimes think the question is kind of a big part of the show. So we'll say, Mr. Jones, let me ask you about your journey, because you started from very humble beginnings. I mean, you were, you were living in the suburbs of San Diego in a trailer, and then now you're the president. I'm a company, and it's like, what's the question? Because, and I think we all do it because we want to make the show better. So we want to make the question sound better. Just ask the question. Just ask the question. The interesting part is going to be the answer, and then the follow up questions that you now, if you have something to add, if you if you know that reminds me of when I lived in San Diego. Let me tell you a quick story. Sure. Do it. The if the P if your listeners don't like you, they're not going to come back anyway. So it's, I mean, if you can, if they share a story, you want to share a story too? Yes, it's a conversation. Go for it. But don't try to make your questions more artful by putting in all these adjectives and these little facts aside. Facts get to the point.

Catherine O'Brien  13:30  
Get to the point. Friends, I think those are all really great tips. Anybody

Matt Cundill  13:34  
want to take a shot of that comment? We're actually being told we're doing it wrong right now? Oh, read it to us, man. It says if you're going to do a live podcast, you need to engage your audience. We might as well just pre record it, edit and put it out later. Just my two cents. I saw Jeremy.

Johnny Podcasts  13:47  
Oh, I saw Jeremy. Put a different comment earlier. Jeremy, I apologize that we're not addressing your comments. One of them was a you recommended getting a condenser mic. I would actually give a loving counterpoint and say that for podcasting, specifically, you should consider a dynamic, dynamic microphone, because all of us are sitting in rooms that are not professionally treated studios, professional singers, musical artists, NPR radio, the really big podcasters, they're going to be using condenser mics because they're sitting in a treated studio. The reason condenser mics are used there is because it's picking up everything in the room, a dynamic mic that all five of us are using right now. I think Matt uses a condenser that are using right now. It's just picking up everything right here. I don't need them to pick up the fan that's going on in the background, or the heat when it kicks on. All that stuff is going to be it's not beneficial to the listener. They we just needed to pick up the voice. So, apologies for not hitting your comment earlier. I would like to say

Matt Cundill  14:43  
that I've had this microphone, but I have moved studios since then, in this room, it feels a little bit less treated. So I feel that there's more echo, and as a result, I will probably be looking at putting in a sure microphone in the near future that is dynamic so it. Cleans it up a little bit. It's something I'm considering as I'm thinking about making the show sound better. For 2025

Jon Gay  15:06  
you get the SM, seven, DB, the brand new one for four or 500 bucks to get the bills in. Pre amp, if you really want to break the bank,

Matt Cundill  15:13  
I do. I think I do.

Johnny Podcasts  15:16  
Catherine. There was one other comment I wanted to add on this too, before we switched off was there's a lot of this stuff that we've just been talking about over the last few minutes, all very abstract. It's all very host dependent. At the end of the day, you're going to find your own rhythm for how you do your show, because every podcast is different. One thing that you can tactically, tactically implement into your show right now as a host to become a better podcaster is speak slower, sounding good. A lot of that too is the crutch word aspect of it, the last thing anybody wants to hear. The worst podcasts that we hear are when the the

Jon Gay  15:52  
today Junior, the host,

Johnny Podcasts  15:53  
just can't seem to spit it out. And a lot of that has to do with the nerves you your brain is running at such a fast pace because you're thinking yourself, oh my god, I'm on the recording light is going I have to say, I have to say something interesting. And then your brain gets caught up with your mouth, and you start spitting out those crutch words. The easiest way to stop yourself from doing that is slow down. Slow down. The way you talk, those ums and uhs then get replaced with a nice, pregnant pause. So that's something you can something you can implement right away and take away from this.

Jon Gay  16:26  
Can I, can I take it back on that, if you have the benefit of working with an editor, or if you're editing your own podcast after the fact, or using one of us, or someone who does what we do, another great tip is, if you just butcher a sentence if you just move, stop, wait a beat. Start the sentence over, or start from the last natural pause. It makes it so much easier for you or your editor to edit, rather than having to splice words together or make an edit in the middle of a word, which is another trick of the trade, you can certainly just stop, go back to the last place you paused, restart. It's a quick snip for you. In the Edit, you'll make your life that much easier. And I have to echo what Johnny said about the ums and us. It's hard to train your brain to do but it's the easiest solution, if you can just wait a second. I suppose just wait a second. You can hear the difference right

David Yas  17:21  
there. The other trick is, if you don't, if you're searching for your words, and sometimes it works just to be natural, like just to say, what's the name of that guy? Oh, my goodness, his name. He's the coach of the Detroit Lions. You know, the big, tough guy. Dan, something. Dan, Campbell. Campbell, thanks. Hopefully your post, your partner jumps in at that point, but the listener will accept that you're human. It's you're really doing yourself a service. If you're being more conversational, Jeremy had another comment. I don't want him to feel disengaged. Do you want to know he was recommending a sense, sense, MK 50 is unreal, good for recording without a mic in front of your face. Check it out. Says Jeremy, I've never used that. I will check

Jon Gay  18:12  
it out. He and his other comments were talking about pencil shotgun microphones, which is, which is a different approach to it, if you want to go with that route, where it's one directional and kind of points right at you. So he's recommending that particular mic, the MKH 50 which I'm gonna write down and look into. Look at us.

Catherine O'Brien  18:27  
We're all diligently writing it

Johnny Podcasts  18:28  
down. I just Googled it, and it's a $1,400 microphone. So maybe try the $60 microphone, and then the 251 first, get the podcast going for a few episodes. Then maybe think about the $1,400 one, unless you just have it lying around

Jon Gay  18:42  
nice flex chair. I've got a $1,400

Matt Cundill  18:45  
Sennheiser in my corner. It's an MK H, I think it's the 416 but the microphone that I'm using right here is the NTG three from Rode. And you know, Rode Microphones are very sensitive, so it's picking up a touch of echo, which I'm not happy about. But on to 2025, and maybe getting another one.

Catherine O'Brien  19:05  
Have you complimented your roads, since they're so sensitive, no

Matt Cundill  19:09  
no speaking time, can't believe you're picking up all this echo.

Johnny Podcasts  19:14  
Speaking of echo and sounding good Catherine is that? Is that a good pivot point into potential post production tools that we can use.

Catherine O'Brien  19:22  
Well, sure. I was gonna say, since we're shopping for $1,400 mics, I was gonna say, this is a great chance to say, Hey, would you like to support the podcast Super Friends? You're more than welcome to but if you want to talk about echo, let's, let's go ahead. This crew here, this, this team of podcast Super Friends, definitely loves a good tool. So Johnny, you have something I can tell is burning. Tell us about a tool that you love.

Johnny Podcasts  19:46  
Well, yeah, part is sounding good. And like we mentioned earlier, most people are going to be sitting in treated studios for their podcasts. So there's going to be room noise, there's going to be the fan in the background, there's going to be echo, if you're not sitting too close to the microphone, it's not going to be as great and perfect as. We want it to be. That's what's so amazing about these tools that have come out, that are available to everybody. You don't have to have the suite of tools that we use. We're using, you know, as we do this stuff every single day. So I'm using third party plugins. I'm getting really surgical with echo removal, vocal leveling, noise removal, things like that. If you're looking at me and going, Johnny, I don't have the time or the inclination to figure out how any of that stuff works. What's just a great tool that I can use right away, the one that I use almost every single day applies mostly to guests of shows that we're working on. A lot of guests will come on podcasts. They might have a microphone that looks like this. They might just be recording into their computer microphone. But there's a great tool called the Adobe Voice repair. I'm fairly certain that's what it's called. And pulling it up right now it is called the Enhance speech tool from Adobe. You just drop your audio right into there. It cleans it up for you. You can use a dial to see how much attention or how much strength of the tool you want to apply to the voice. And Jack uses another tool that he's going to share with you next, but that is the tool that I would recommend. You can just drop your audio right in there. It'll clean it up, not incredibly well, but it will do the job to a certain extent, and that's something that anyone can start using right now. All you need is an internet connection and some

Jon Gay  21:17  
audio, I will say, if to use large files on that on the Adobe enhance. And the website, by the way, is podcast.adobe.com or podcast.adobe.com/enhance you have to be have an Adobe subscription for larger files, but they do have for smaller files. You can do it. My hunch on this one is that it was modeled after zoom recordings. And trained on Zoom recordings because it does a pretty good job of pulling up that base echo and and and a little bit echo and room noise. And I can get you can get it to sound great at like 15 or 20% it defaults to 90% when you when you upload a file. But if you go 1520 you'll notice a pretty good difference.

Catherine O'Brien  22:03  
The moment has come. We've all been waiting for this. Zoom has entered the chat. David, your time has come. Tell us zoom.

David Yas  22:15  
So the reason why they're mocking me gently is because I've I use Zoom to record most of my remote podcasts, and there are other more advanced podcast friendly platforms, but I do like to use Zoom, and so I'll give you just a couple quick tips on if you're going to use Zoom and record a podcast, what some of the settings should be, etc. First of all, you have a guest connecting by zoom.

Jon Gay  22:41  
Matt has pulled up the line. Four out of five podcasters on the show. Do not use him. I will use it in case of three, 3.8

Johnny Podcasts  22:47  
emergency backup. It's great. Okay,

Jon Gay  22:50  
I'll now we've cut you out of the neat please tell us how to use Zoom.

David Yas  22:54  
So first off is, when you have a guest connecting by zoom, if they have a microphone, there's a fair chance they don't know how to set zoom to pick up the microphone. This is simple stuff, but a lot of guests will not know it. So if you don't know, you just tell them go to the lower left hand corner of the app. There's a little microphone icon, and there's an arrow to the right of that. You click on that, and you should be able to select both your speaker and your microphone. So you want to make sure, and it's amazing how many times people go, oh yeah. They thought they already did it. They went to their computer settings. No, you need the settings in zoom to link up to the microphone that you're using. The other thing is, sometimes, when they do that, they'll select Direct the correct mic, and they can't hear you, because what they did was they selected the mic on the speaker. So there are two settings there, microphone and speaker, simple, right? So speaker is where you want to hear it out of now, a lot of microphones plug in USB. Microphones will have a headphone jack that you can plug in. It is a good thing to do, because then you can hear your own voice back when you're recording. It's just makes you feel a lot more like a podcaster. This is your guest we're talking about. So if they select you might have to tell them to unplug the mic and start over, because they can't hear you now, so you got to do this, or whatever, put something in the chat, but you want to have the speaker selected as the microphone, also, if your headphones are plugged into the speaker, so the microphone. The other setting that is probably the most important is there is a setting called high use, high quality audio. It's, I'm looking for the exact terminology here. Well, I think that's what it is. You want to go to audio settings, and there's a button that says, there's a couple buttons. One says, suppress background noise. You certainly want to select that and play around with the settings in zoom, because

Jon Gay  24:46  
Dave, can I interrupt you for one second the background noise, I think, is going to depend on your situation. I don't if you've got somebody on a good mic that doesn't have a lot of background noise, that can cause distortion. If you select it in most settings, in a normal room with background I would say, use it. But. I think that that background noise is only useful when you need it. You

David Yas  25:03  
can set it to low. Also, that's probably the way to go. So that's a good point. And then the it's the show in meeting option to enable original sound. That's a mouthful, but that's what it's called. If you go to audio settings, you can do that before you get on the Zoom call if you want in meeting option to enable original sound. And once you select that, anytime you go into zoom, you'll see it on the upper right hand corner of the screen. It'll say, do you want the original sound? If you click, yes, you it's it's a lot better. I use it a lot actually, because I'm playing, like, sound effects and stuff. I'll play a sound effect that's probably not the right ones anyway, if you don't do that Zoom, because zoom does a lot of things automatically to reduce sound, and sometimes you don't want that, because you want the original sound. So you know, it'll it'll try to filter out things like in the background. But you might want that stuff when you're doing a podcast, or you might want some other noise coming from your computer. So there are other things you can do. You can go into the settings and zoom and you can request to record your speakers in different tracks. This is useful if you're going to take the time to edit it in post. It's very useful if you have one speaker whose level is very low and you want to raise that. So zoom has the capability of recording in different tracks. It'll record you in one track, and you're each guest in a different track. And for those of you using video, you might want to take a look at the video settings, because I have mine set to record in speaker mode and gallery mode. I like both options because you never know if you're editing a video after the fact, what you're going to want. And you know, speaker mode is just it's going to switch to the speaker every time the speakers speaking obviously, or gallery if you want them both, if you get both versions, you know. And some of this is because I have the premium subscription to zoom. I'm probably the only one on the call that does, but play around with those choices and and, yeah, it'll work a lot better for you. David,

Jon Gay  27:11  
if I can also, if I if,

Matt Cundill  27:13  
because there's like, three settings in there, and I'm already confused. So one of the settings is music and professional audio. You can also enable original sound. And there's also, I think, high fidelity Music Mode, which might be be that. But what do you know? What the difference is between those and which ones your podcasters should pay attention to?

David Yas  27:31  
I I would suggest enable original sound is the only one that really matters. You can try the other ones and experiment with them and see if the sound is crisper or whatever. But I want that original sound. I don't want zoom cutting me out. I don't want, I mean, you know, Zoom will do that thing where one speaker starts speaking and it automatically lowers the voice of somebody else. And for a podcast, you might if somebody tells a funny joke, you want that natural feeling of everybody laughing together, you know? And you can get that if you enable original sound, if you don't zoom, might do some weird stuff where all of a sudden you just you're home, or you don't hear anything at all. So that's, that's what I recommend to the others. I admit, I haven't played around with all of them, certainly. You know, do your worst and click some buttons and see

Jon Gay  28:17  
what happens. Jag, because I unintentionally cut David out on a couple of those and contradict him. I want to back him up on something he said at the end, using having the multiple versions of the video. And I think the file be labeled, I believe avo and GVO, when you download them, the speaker viewer toggles between the speakers who's speaking, and then the gallery view, where it shows everybody. I have a client that still records in zoom. It's it's just easier at this point, rather than she doesn't want to learn a new platform. And that's totally fine. Platform, and that's totally fine. And that speaker view doesn't always move fast enough when the speaker changes, there can be a lag when the co host picks it up from the host, and then, now, if you don't have that ability to edit that video, you've got the shot of just one person while the other one is speaking, and they're sitting there just listening, right? So, so it is really important to have those options. If you're going to edit the video, and if look, and if you're just going to take the straight raw video feed and not make any edits, then sure take that gallery view. It's going to show both people, or all the people at all times, and run it. But if you're going to edit it and tighten it up and make it really a good quality product, having those options, the multiple options in the video, is really helpful.

Catherine O'Brien  29:24  
And I think just even David, the fact that that there are these advanced settings, we all are using different platforms, and being able to take the time to sort of experiment know, and knowing that they are the that they are there, that the advanced settings are there, having the time to experiment and finding what's best for you, that's going to get you a lot further than just going with the standard and just not being completely happy

Sarah Burke (Voiceover)  29:52  
the podcast. Super Friends support podcasting 2.0 so feel free to send us a boost if you're listening on a newer podcast. App. Find the full list at new podcast apps.com

Catherine O'Brien  30:04  
Before we leave tools and zoom, Matt, you have a question.

Matt Cundill  30:08  
This one's for David and possibly Johnny. And so let's say we get into it with on Zoom and somebody just doesn't have a microphone, and the host sounds good, but the guest sounds bad. Would you take the guest audio and run it through something like Adobe, enhance and then come back and edit it together with the

Johnny Podcasts  30:33  
host? Yeah, because primarily in podcasts, the guest is going to be doing the majority of the talking, especially in guest driven, interview driven shows, they're going to be doing probably at least 60% of the talking, if they sound bad the whole episode, I feel like goes to hell in a hand basket. So one of the let's here's what I would do in this situation if I were David and I were using Zoom primarily as a podcasting, recording function. So have you guys ever heard of the all in podcast, yes, with, uh, David Sacks and chamoth, it's like the V says, like these four VC guys there, they have a massive podcast. What I have been reliable, reliably told that they do. None of them have microphones like this. And if they do, they're they're off camera. They look like great what I've been told that they do, and what I would recommend people doing as well. Because sometimes when you're running, even when you're running a mic through zoom it doesn't always sound great. It still kind of has that zoomy feel to it, and zoomy sound tinny. What is great for Apple product users is just open up quick time in the background, so your microphones plugged in, open up Quick Time player in the background. Hit file at the top, click the drop down menu, click New video recording. It's going to record your camera. It's going to record your microphone in a really clean feed that doesn't require an internet connection, so if your internet drops, it doesn't cut out anything. And then it'll also record your camera as well. And there's a little drop down menu within the within the Quick Time player window, where you can set your mic, you can set your camera, turn the volume on, that all the way down, hit record, just let that run in the background. That's what those guys do. Then they come together on Zoom. Now they have two options. If something happens on Zoom and their internet drops or it just doesn't sound great. They all have those quick time backups that I think that they use as the primary audio and video that goes out to everybody. So yes, Matt, in that instance, you always want to clean up the guest audio, even if it's combined on one track. It's worth the extra time it takes to cut out all of that guest audio, move it down one track on your on your DAW export that, put it into Adobe, put it into studio sound, get it cleaned up. Because, I mean, we all really care about the listener experience, and in these guest driven podcasts, you have to do what you can to clean up the guest audio.

Catherine O'Brien  32:55  
You will be slightly sobbing, a quiet sob, as you're doing it. Because it does take a lot of time, but it is a nightmare, but it is absolutely worth it. David, did you have something to say about that?

David Yas  33:06  
Yes, well, I mean, the audio filters, I don't use the Adobe one. I use the one in descript, which is called studio sound, which is dunk back and forth, very similar results to both. But sometimes that will do things that you don't want to do that. It'll, it'll, it'll cut out certain little words and things. So if you've got one, the host has good audio, best not to mess with it. The guest has horrible Zoom audio. You got to you. You got to mess with it. So, yeah, I sometimes live in fear of going through an audio track and knowing I want to filter some of it and some of it, I don't that takes a really long time. I'm sure we've all done that, but if you got two separate tracks, you're ahead of the game. So

Johnny Podcasts  33:49  
and one of the things, Jack, you could probably chime in on this too, because I know you and I both do this. We Jack and I with our clients. We will do what are called Audio pre checks. So our clients will jump on Riverside, they'll jump on squad Castle, jump on Zoom. We will also show up about five or 10 minutes before the recording. And just get everybody set up the host. Hey, your microphone isn't plugged in. Let's get that plugged in and set to the correct standing. Your fan is on in the background. Let's get that turned off. I can hear a dog barking. Can you close that door? Let's close your shades. That lights coming in, let's reposition your camera solution for a better angle. The number one thing that I always have to remind people too, everything goes on, do not disturb. Slack, Outlook, email, your phone, anything that goes ding on these remote recordings is getting picked up while you're talking, and it always happens when the guest is saying something super profound, they get a Slack notification. I can't cut that out. No one can cut that out. It's a nightmare to deal with. So, you know, have a have a short checklist. If you don't have a producer that's joining with you on these shows, have a short checklist. Okay? Air conditioners are off, shades are closed, internet connection is. Strong notifications are silenced, and then you're ready to

Jon Gay  35:03  
roll. Johnny says air conditioners are off because he's in Texas. Matt and I and David are like, How about how about 33

Johnny Podcasts  35:08  
out here, we're freezing our butts off. That a

Matt Cundill  35:11  
coincidence. It's minus 33 here.

Catherine O'Brien  35:16  
I turned off the heater for this very, this very podcast. There was a professor who wrote a book, and I was kind of following him on a couple different podcasts episode. He was being a guest because he was promoting his book, and I was like, I am going to email the Department Chair of the wherever he's a teacher, get an intern in there to turn off the notifications, because every single interview that I heard him on there was ping, after paying, after paying, after paying. It was just like, Please deliver. Yeah, deliver the intern, I beg you. Any other, any other tools? Anybody want us to say would like to share right now, because I have a little surprise for all of the podcast, Super Friends, yes, jag,

Jon Gay  35:57  
I'll jump in with one we, we talked about descript studio sound. We've talked about that in previous episodes. Riverside also has a magic audio feature which will enhance some bad audio, but there's no dialing the percentage. It's just, you know, use it or don't use it. They and descript, which now on squad cast and Riverside, they do have the ability for you to edit your audio as a Word doc. So if editing audio is not your thing and you don't have the budget to hire somebody to edit, you can give that a try. It does have limitations. Certainly, you can sometimes tell when an edit has been made, but, but it's an option for those on a limited budget, who who may not have the tech savviness or the desire to learn how to do it we

Catherine O'Brien  36:40  
love, yeah. Speaking of sponsors, let's get them to sponsor us, because we bring them up almost every single

time we talk about

David. You are, you are our forerunner on some of the AI things that are happening. Do you have an AI tool you want to share with us?

David Yas  36:57  
Yeah? Unfortunately, it also comes from descript. I have a couple, but the first one I wanted to mention comes from, does come from the script who is constantly trying to up their game when it comes to AI and they have voiceover robots, basically. So instead of recording a voiceover intro or something, you can type it in and then pick from bullpen of about, you know, eight to 10 voices. And so I took the description of this very Podcast, the podcast Super Friends, and then I added a little flair, and I ran it through the machine, and this is what the robot sounds like. I played for you. Now,

Voiceover  37:33  
Hey, what's up, guys? You got to check out this cool show. I just, I just stumbled upon five podcast veterans hosting a monthly, live streamed round table about podcasting sounds awesome, right? If you want to evolve your podcast, or if you've got an idea for a show, there's no better place to start. Can I get an amen? The Super Friends dig deep on all the details you might not think about, like, for example, you know, best practices for your show's website and other stuff, like streamlining your weekly workflow, marketing your podcast to the, you know, the masses, and getting the most from your, you know, your RSS feed. So

David Yas  38:16  
I just said, I'm now, I'm conscious of it. You know, you know, the mass

Johnny Podcasts  38:19  
is so human that, that she even

David Yas  38:22  
said, Well, I added those, but I just wanted to see if she would give it the right inflection, and I'll play this like five second clip back,

Voiceover  38:30  
streamlining your weekly workflow, marketing your podcast to the, you know, the masses.

David Yas  38:35  
Now, the way she said, You know, that's subtle, but the robot knew exactly what to do with that. You know? It was, it was under her breath. It was like, you know why?

Jon Gay  38:44  
I think we can all say Amen, you know,

David Yas  38:46  
well, right? So, and I've had good success in other situations. I mean, when she said, Can I get an amen? That was only Okay, but, but a lot of times I'm surprised at how the AI voice understands inflection, and so I don't want to put voiceover artists out of a job. I think they're great, and they work very hard at what they do and everything. But if you need an intro to a podcast, you can play around with this on descript. Oh, sorry, Matt on the screen. Matt is telling us that if you go to Matt Cundill voice.com, that's a real voice, and it's going to be much better than this, but I'll say this, how about as a compromise in a pinch, if you need a quick little, you know, Intro to your show, or a transition you know, sound, sound, Sting, or whatever you experiment with These, it's it's it's getting better. It's scary, but it's getting better next. Next year, the podcast, Super Friends podcast, will be done all by our avatars, instead of us, because we're busy people.

Matt Cundill  39:50  
I know you joke about that, but it is possible to take a blog and dump it into notebook LM and for two people to have a conversation about it. And I. It's a great prank, if you want. So if you got anybody in the house who has a blog, take their blog, stick it in a notebook, LM, and then play it back for them, and immediately they want to call a lawyer and Sue and say, Who's plagiarizing my work and doing a podcast and monetizing it, and it's a that that should be a good joke for about six months.

Jon Gay  40:19  
That's a Google tool, Google notebook.lm,

Johnny Podcasts  40:24  
isn't it? Isn't it expensive? I think it's

Matt Cundill  40:27  
free. Oh, it is. Oh, okay,

Catherine O'Brien  40:29  
you're the problem, or me interested,

Matt Cundill  40:31  
you're the product.

Catherine O'Brien  40:35  
That's the price. Oh, those are great tools. Any other tools?

Matt Cundill  40:39  
Um, yeah, I've got one. Matt Cundill, so you might be saying yourself, I don't really know how my show sounds, or I don't really know how to make it better. And if you don't know, well maybe you should ask, and that's where you should probably be doing a listener survey, and ask those questions about the sound. And I think there's some questions you can ask inside the survey that can get you the feedback that you're looking for. So you already know that you can go and see the consumption in Apple and Spotify, that will give you a good indication. But you could ask, is the show too long? Is the show too short? Do you like the guests on the show? How do you how do you listen to the show? Do you find it to be a positive experience? Does this sound good? Just ask. Just ask your audience. They'll let you know.

Catherine O'Brien  41:32  
Matt, do you ever worry about the stated preference versus revealed preference in those kinds of surveys, asking those questions, meaning what people say that they like, which versus what they actually respond to. Yeah,

Matt Cundill  41:44  
what they say versus what they do. So I probably, if I I'm looking for perceptions, I'm not looking for reality. So when you ask a question like, do you think the show is too long or too short, these are just perceptions. This doesn't mean that if you got a lot of too short that you should make the show shorter or longer. Definitely don't do that. But if you you're actually what they're telling you is we're really enjoying the show. We always wish there was more of it, so it means people are liking your content. Gotta be careful about making making decisions based on based on feedback, and I'll tell you why? It's because the product that you're offering is free, and people commenting on something they're getting for free never really sort of have a connection to it. But you know, if they paid for it, then you probably get your survey would come out a little bit more honest, a little bit differently. They feel that they're invested into the show, and we learned this from radio research years ago, and that if you ask people enough about what they really want in a radio station, they'll say one of two things. We're tired of being asked about what we want in a radio station. Or you'll get this, it should be some sort of jazz fusion radio station with no DJs, no talking, just one type of music, no interruptions, because people will say they hate everything, and absolutely no commercials ever. And the truth of the matter is, if you put this on the air, it's going to suck, so you've got to be careful. You're really looking for perceptions.

Jon Gay  43:14  
And you play the same songs too many times, yeah? Hey,

Matt Cundill  43:17  
by the way, can you play that song again? Right? Yeah. So remember that your product is more than likely free, and that you're really looking for perceptions. And so if you're going to make a change, how are we going to change that perception? Because I really don't want to change my show too much, but how are we going to change the perception that it is to whatever comes back?

Catherine O'Brien  43:38  
Very good. David, One Last Tool from you? Sure

David Yas  43:42  
I'm the One Last Tool. No. So you radio guys know that sound effects can be effective, and also they can be a little bit much, and I've been accused of doing too much of them, but I am a fan of if you're doing, like a list or something, why not have some sounds things before, like number one, number two. I like them as guideposts for the listeners. So one show I do, it's just like item one is item one. That's a legal show, a gavel, you know, an item two and such. I wanted for Oh, but Have I mentioned that I have a music podcast that, thank you. Whoever the 49 minutes into the pod. Whoever had that in the pool. It's best 10s of top 10 times we do, we do drafts. And we do, this is for fun. We do. We will draft like the Top Albums of 1981 and I wanted to jingle to do like that. Here's round one. Here's round two. I used suno.com I've mentioned it before on the pod. It's still, uh, there is a paid version, but there's a free version. It creates songs for you. You can type in the lyrics so you can tell it yourself. And so for the the jingle for round one, this is what it came up with.

Jingle  44:58  
It's round one. Round one. Damn, we're already having fun. You

David Yas  45:07  
can decide whether that's annoying or not, but it's, it's you can. You can try that a bunch of different times to see what it spits out each time. A lot of fun to work with. If you want, like a little intro, it doesn't have to be silly. You can tell this. You can tell it to be in a style that sounds corporate and professional instead. So how do you spell suno.com Dave, S, U, N, O, P, just make no, I want to make sure, because I'm going to chat it for my podcast. No, please do Yeah. I don't know why it's called that, but suno.com it is being sued by the record industry, so use it while you can. No,

Catherine O'Brien  45:42  
i Great. Oh, boy. And from our own podcast, Super Friends, non practicing attorney at that, very good. Well, those are great tools. Okay, I have a little fun surprise for the podcast, Super Friends, on the topic of sounding better. You know that I love a little lightning round. So I'm going to do a little bit of audio sins. I want to hear, which is the worst audio sin, ready? Mouth clicks or breathiness. Mouth clicks or breathiness, which is the worst audio sin? If I'm breathiness further.

Jon Gay  46:26  
That was really awkward. Same time, I'm actually gonna say breaths are worse, because to the trained ear, we hear the clicks, and believe me, they drive me insane. It's like the water dripping on your forehead that torture but the the breaths are much more noticeable to folks, especially when it's a really long, loud breath. Rather, if you want to leave a small breath in between a sentence that sounds natural, but if somebody really gets the end of thing, or is really thinking about an answer when you ask them a question and the guest goes, that can be distracting if it happens too often, lower the volume.

Johnny Podcasts  47:02  
I agree with Jack. There's a great tool from there's a great plugin from iZotope called mouth D click you've dropped that on your audio. The mouth clickiness is gone. It's a fantastic tool. Another way that the breathiness can be really annoying is if you're just leaving both tracks alone, you're not playing with, you know, muting out the non speaker. So Jack, start talking about something.

Jon Gay  47:27  
I'm gonna start talking about. My wife does that to me all the time, and

Johnny Podcasts  47:33  
it's for a different reason. Jack, you know, it's, it's totally normal people breathe. And not everybody is a professional podcaster like or has a ton of experience being on a microphone. So this stuff like that is prone to happen. But I would say the breathing because the breathiness is a lot harder to remove, because you're going after each individual one, whereas this isotope plug in just broad brush removes every click automatically.

Catherine O'Brien  47:59  
David or Matt, any vote on the breathiness versus

Matt Cundill  48:03  
I'm a voice actor, mouth clicks means I'm going to be redoing the sentence

Jon Gay  48:10  
and let's and I should also mention, to prevent mouth clickiness, there are little things you can do, because you may not realize you're doing it. Make sure your mouth isn't overly dry or wet when you're doing a podcast, yeah.

Johnny Podcasts  48:21  
PH level,

Jon Gay  48:25  
Well, honestly, and I learned this from our radio mentor back in the day, you know, your natural temptation is grab a bottle of water out of the fridge. If you're in person, offer it up to your guest. Cold water is really bad for your voice room room temperature water is much better, because it's like your vocal cords are like any muscle. If they get cold, they're going to be stiff as you're trying to speak, especially for a prolonged period of time. So keep your keep hydrated, but not too hydrated and not too cold, not too hot. Just since Goldilocks, I've

Matt Cundill  48:51  
been drinking a lot of tea today, lots of warm tea out of my mug. Here, no bills. Something else is they say a green apple, it will control the mouth. Really? I go one step further. I will actually take a swig of apple cider vinegar. Wow.

Catherine O'Brien  49:09  
No kidding, that sounds like David. Do you have a vote on this last one before

David Yas  49:13  
the next hippie medicine? Yeah, I'd vote that the mouth clicks is worse, because I it's I have that problem, and I listeners have commented that I clicked my I thought I was doing it on purpose to make a point, like, Hmm, but no, I just do it all the time. If you're doing it on purpose, that's a different thing. It's same with the breathing. It's like, you ask you want to sound frustrated to make a point, like, I can't believe we're talking about this again. Like, that's fine, but yeah, it's, I'm going for some apple cider vinegar. More important, yep, next

Catherine O'Brien  49:44  
audio sin, Echo or crutch words, Echo or crutch words, which is the worst audio sin, jag is reeling, so I'm going to you first.

Jon Gay  49:57  
Oh, I'm. On the fence, honestly, let me go last

Johnny Podcasts  50:01  
Johnny. We have to choose Jag. This doesn't mean we don't have to. We don't have to marry ourselves. To this decision, I'm gonna choose echo every single time. There is just way too many. There are too many podcasts out there today that have good, not great, but better than your audio. That if you have echo in yours, there's, it's just so distracting. No one has it anymore. You can't do it. It just is such a it's such a indicator that you're not like taking the next step to make this a more professional product. It's so bad you have, you have to remove the echo before anything else.

Jon Gay  50:39  
Depends on how much echo? If there's a little bit of room, Echo, I can deal with it. If it's,

Johnny Podcasts  50:43  
you know what I'm talking you're yelling enough to where it's where it's noticeable, like, like, if it's

Jon Gay  50:47  
to the point where it's distracting, yes, worse, worse than I'm it's also drives

David Yas  50:51  
us crazy because it's fixable. I would vote echo is worse as well. It's fixable. You know, I mean, so fix it. Wait, what was the other one. Oh, crutch words. So crutch words, I think we can't stand them. We do have software that can take them out. Descript again, does a great job at that. But you'd be surprised how many I did a podcast. Once these two hosts had a guest on, he was a hockey coach, I think, and he said, You know more than you know. I mean, you know we, I mean, you know we started, you know, with, with, you know, one round of players, and then, you know, and I said to the guys afterwards, I go, the guy broke the record for your nose. And they said, Oh, really, I didn't notice. And I was like, how could you not notice? Sometimes the average listener doesn't notice it as much, because people do talk that way. Now it's still not great, and we still should work to get rid of our crutch words, but echo, echo is more of a deal killer, sort of

Matt Cundill  51:44  
right away, Echo will get rid of the listener faster than anything.

Jon Gay  51:50  
All right, any last votes on Catherine? Yes, Catherine, you want to chime in? Are you only moderating this panel? I'm moderating this

Catherine O'Brien  51:55  
panel astutely, if I may say so myself. The final audio sin, peaking, meaning too hot or too low, too quiet, which is the worst audio sin?

Matt Cundill  52:11  
The answer is, peaking. I can't fix peaking. I can fix the other one.

Johnny Podcasts  52:16  
And sometimes you can, you can fix it. It's, it's, it's, I've it distorts past a certain level. But the peaking that I'm thinking about is the one that kind of stings your ear when they laugh too loud, or they or they think, yeah, clipping, peeking. I would say that because we're creating, it's all about creating a comfortable listening experience. And when they're peaking, or they're clipping, then it's just ah, like, God, and then you want to turn it off when it's too low, okay, we crank the volume, fine, bump some gain on it and post fine. I would say peaking.

Jon Gay  52:49  
Well, related to that, I gotta say a related sin is too loud and too quiet when you have the host and the co host at vastly different levels. Picture somebody listening either in air pods or in the car. And the worst thing you can do when you're driving in traffic and you're trying to remember where you're going, Johnny's miming it right now, turning the volume on and up and down every time it switches between the co host and the host that'll lose somebody quick, because that is maddening as a listener. Yeah,

David Yas  53:17  
the and to your point, to piggyback on that lower is probably less of a sin, because think about, I mean, you've, you've kind of said it, but if one of those moments in your car when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, your ears get absolutely blown out, or worse, in your ear, but if it's too low, you can usually turn it up. Now, if it's cool to unlistenable, or it's so much lower than everything else on the internet, then, yeah, I mean, you should fix that, but usually people can turn it up, but it once they try to turn it down, maybe they've lost some tissue in their ears. So we don't want that. Okay,

Matt Cundill  53:54  
so I've got a question, because my first four episodes of my podcast that I started back in 2016 sounded like that. I felt like I had to, like, turn it up and turn it down every time somebody was talking. So what would you recommend to fix that? Is there a plug in, or is there a tool? I've heard something called level later. Is that what that

Jon Gay  54:13  
does? Level later, yeah, yeah. I was going there too. Go ahead. Catherine, well,

Catherine O'Brien  54:16  
yeah, level later is a great free, well, free tool and jagging you the the direct link to it, because, well, here, let me tell you this, I thought that level later was just for Apple, and as a non Apple user, I for years, I was denying myself the use of love later. This is a great free tool that can bring the levels up to the same to equalize the levels of audio of multiple speakers. It is a great tool. I love it, and I'm so thankful that it actually is for PC as well as Apple. And it is something that I try not to use, because I try to have great audio going in. But it works well. If you have that problem where people are at different levels, it brings everybody up to the same point. Great. Great tool, and

David Yas  55:00  
pardon me, Catherine, it's its own app. It's not like a plug in for an exact

Catherine O'Brien  55:04  
okay, yes, that is right.

Johnny Podcasts  55:06  
If you're looking for a plug in, what I use is, you know, for, when we say plugins, for the people listening and watching. If you're taking your audio, you put it in GarageBand, you put it in Adobe. What's the Adobe version? Jag of audio? Audio, audition, yeah, yeah. Audition, yes, thank you. I use Logic Pro X. There's a great company called waves. Waves is a third party plug in creator, and they make one called Vocal Rider. So think about a surfer riding a wave. The Vocal Rider plugin. Will you set it to Okay? I want it to be at a certain decibel threshold the audio. Okay, the audio that I am now picking up as the vocal writer plugin is way too low. I'm gonna raise it up, and then I'm gonna bring it back down, and then I'm gonna bring it up, and it does it in real time with the audio, so it keeps everything at a really nice, tight level of whatever it is you choose to set it at. So if you don't wanna drop it into a website and then back into your DAW you want to just do everything within one program. Vocal writer is what I use.

Catherine O'Brien  56:09  
That's a great tip. Okay? And we can all agree that the greatest audio sin is when the ads are louder than the actual podcast episode. That is the greatest sin of all.

Matt Cundill  56:19  
Does anybody 16 lefts for everything level. Matt, go ahead stuff. I think you need to follow the instructions from Apple and Spotify, because we assume that 80% of you know podcast, your podcast listeners are going to listen to through one of those two things, Apple assets, your sound be at about minus 14 lefts, minus 16, lefts and Spotify at about minus 14. If you land your sound somewhere in there, the ads should come up correctly. Yeah.

Johnny Podcasts  56:47  
Split the difference go minus 15. Yeah.

Catherine O'Brien  56:51  
That is a great tip. Final Browning, get out. Well, this has been a great start to our 2025 we'll go around and say goodbye in the most beautiful, natural sounding voices that we can possibly muster. David, we'll start with

David Yas  57:04  
you. I'm sorry, what was the question that's this is called sounding.

Catherine O'Brien  57:08  
We're saying goodbye, yes. Wait, in a natural, non AI, real voice. Well,

David Yas  57:17  
you know, the thing is, you know, I'm here in Boston, you know. And David Yaz pod 617, dot com, the Boston Podcast Network. Thank you. Catherine Johnny,

Johnny Podcasts  57:26  
Hi, I'm Johnny podcast. You can follow me on x at Johnny podcast. Please subscribe to this show on YouTube, Apple or Spotify, or however you consume your podcast.

Matt Cundill  57:37  
I'm Matt Kendall, and you can follow me on the sound off podcast, which comes out every week. And as well, you can find me at sound off dot network on accent at Matt Cundill go bills.

Catherine O'Brien  57:49  
And Matt is a professional voice over actor,

Matt Cundill  57:53  
which you couldn't tell from that exit. Chad,

Jon Gay  57:58  
before I forget, shout out to our new friend David Campbell, loyal listener in Canada, who was on a call with earlier today, and he said he couldn't wait for our show today. So David, thank you. I am John Gay from jag in Detroit podcast. You can find me@jagindetroit.com or on all the socials at jag in Detroit, j, A, G, since

Catherine O'Brien  58:15  
we're doing shout outs. Shout out to Jeremy, shout out to descript, and we the podcast, Super Friends are wishing you a great 2025 again, Captain O'Brien, we'll see you next time.

Sarah Burke (Voiceover)  58:27  
Thanks for listening to the podcast. Super Friends for a transcript of the show, or to connect with the Super Friends. Go to the show notes of this episode, or go to sound off dot network,

Tara Sands (Voiceover)  58:38  
produced and distributed by the sound off media company. You.