I’m new to the world of voice over and podcast looking for a upcoming sound engineer who wants to practice there art whilst helping me record to the best possible sound, also any keen subjects for podcast?
Hey man! can’t say im a sound engineer but i was just wondering if you’ve used the pirate podcast rooms yet?
also do u know what ur podcast is gonna be about? what kind of subjects are you looking for?
Hey, great to hear you’re getting into podcasting!
There’s a couple of handy bits of post-processing you can do after you’ve recorded to make things sound better (EQ, compression, etc etc) but if you record badly, it can make it very difficult to improve the sound later on and get a professional sound. A few things to look out for:
Set the mic gain at a nice medium level, so that the signal isn’t too quiet going into your DAW, but isn’t maxing out and clipping when you get louder (especially if you’re the kind of podcaster to get excitable and shout!). Usually your interface/ DAW channel meter will flash red if it clips - it doesn’t matter if it happens every now and again, but you should try to avoid it generally, since it sounds quite harsh and distorted when you listen back to “clipped” audio.
You should also make sure you’ve got good mic technique! That means pointing the mic at your mouth, but NOT pointing your mouth at the mic, else you’ll get “air blasts” on plosive, frickative and sibilant sounds (plosives like puh, buh, frickatives like tuh, fuh, ssssssssibilance like ssssss!). Staying around 8 inches away from your mic is a good rule of thumb - you’ll naturally move around a bit, but especially for podcasting and radio, you want to get out of the habit of moving around a lot, or talking away from the mic! It’s one thing to get into good habits yourself, but trying to get one-time podcast guests to do it too is a nightmare, so don’t worry if it’s not perfect 100% of the time!
That’s just a very quick overview of a few things to consider - an engineer can polish a good sound, but it’s very difficult to save a bad sound! You live and learn though - you should dive in, give it a go, and work to constantly improve rather than worry too much about it. Once you know what you’re listening for, you’d be amazed what some professional-level podcasts get away with in terms of audio mistakes! Content is always more important than the mic quality.
I hope that’s a help - let us know when you put anything up!
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Thank you really appreciate the advice, I’m planning on getting in for a few trial runs hopefully tonight.
Regards
Warren Beckwith
This is such a legendary reply, thanks @Diane_Pirate! Shame we don’t have podcast studios at Nottingham yet 
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Anywhere can be a podcast studio if you’ve got a Zoom H2!
Disclaimer: some places can be better than other places. An actual podcast studio is ideal
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I do have a zoom however the sound quality and lack of distractions of brilliant.
Agree with you there, sometimes it’s all about getting into the mood. That’s why the recording studio (or pod studio!) is such a special place for many people, it takes you away from the “every day”, into the zone.
Absolutely it’s about being chilled in a working environment.
Currently I’m using on my own for Carole’s things, I do have ten podcast live on Spotify with AllTalk Global which I did over a year ago but not in studio studio home studio, where I had too many interruptions, which loses flow and I don’t like losing flow.
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