Podcast editing — the basics

Make sure your episode sounds good by getting the basics right

A while back, someone asked me about my podcast audio editing process, so here’s a summary of my approach. I often get comments about how good the podcast sounds, so hopefully this is helpful!

Problem 1: not enough colours for all the wave forms

I use Zencastr to record — this gives me separated tracks in high quality mp3 (wav would be better, maybe I’ll upgrade one day). I use Audacity to edit. There have been concerns about T&C on newer Audacity editions — I’m still on 2.4.2 — it works fine.

I take my separated tracks and load them into Audacity. The first job is to remove background noise, apply compression (make the loud bits & quiet bits closer in volume) and then normalise the loudness to make sure the whole volume is the same “perceived loudness” — so let’s go ahead and do that.

Removing background noise

To remove background noise, find a bit where the person isn’t talking, select it & go to Effect>Noise Reduction and click “Get Noise Profile”. Then select the entire track, go to Effect>Noise Profile again & OK it — it’ll process the whole track and remove background hiss etc.