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Trent
Welcome back to the Snohomish podcast playground.
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Trent
Last time we talked about actually recording, what do you need to do and happen through there. There was one thing that I happened to miss and I realized after we'd finished recording and got it ready to go, is that you want to track your levels. I don't know if we talked too much about this previously, and this will be one big thing to consider and impacts your editing. So I wanted to make sure we touched on it. When you are recording, looking at your instruments, your whatever you're recording, your interfaces are, you're going to see these bars that kind of go up and down with your talking. You want to make sure you play around with what's called the gain, as well as the sliders to make sure that level doesn't go to the very top. You want to leave a little room at the top when you're talking normally, because if it goes too high and peak, you're going to get distorted audio that you can't really recover.
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Trent
You want to make sure that you're staying in a reasonable band, which a lot of them will have actually yellow colors that you want your loudest parts to go into.
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Trent
And then mostly staying in that upper green and that yellow bar area in between those two as you're talking regularly. Why we say that is because when you do a really loud laugh or something comes up, you'll get higher in that yellow and you won't quite get to the point where it's what's called peaking or just going louder than the gain can handle or anything like that. And it becomes distorted. And again, that is very hard to recover from.
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Trent
Most of your software can't quite handle that. So that is one thing that you want to make sure you keep an eye on as you're recording and try and set those levels as we call them going forward. And again, a lot of that will be with the gain, because depending on how you're recording, a lot of those recording devices will happen before any of your sliders or volume controls. Just wanted to put that out there and keep that in mind. I'm sure some of you have played around with that already and have figured this one out on your own. Apologies for not getting that in there sooner.
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Trent
Now we're going to talk about editing and not even editing. There's a whole nother step in there before we go into editing of getting your audio ready to edit.
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Trent
My example that I really like to kind of share and talk about is you can go and put your audio in and it'll sound one way in your program, which we'll talk about the programs here in a second. And you can go through trial, these different things, make the edits, cut everything, get it to where you want it to be. And then you will apply some things to the audio and the track levels that will help it balance, make everything seem consistent and sound better. And once you do that, you basically have to re edit again if you don't do that beforehand because that will change your levels. You might hear a lot of breasts, a lot of background noise that you didn't hear before. That's why we're going to take some time to talk about how do you actually set up for editing before you go and cut anything or do anything. So first off, editing, what software, what programs do you use? There's multiple we can use. We've talked about some of these before when we talked about recording, I believe the programs are going to talk about our audacity, which is free to use. We will talk about some of the pros and cons of that one. Reaper, R-E-A-P-E-R, as you would expect it to sound. That is another great one for a one time rate that is really good. You also have Adobe Audition, which is a very common one to use for if you have the Adobe Suite, very common one, great option to use. And then you also have DaVinci Resolve, which is a lot of people will think that's a video one. But really good audio has some really great plugins for that as well. So that is another great option. And there is a free option, which is one of the best parts to start and it has a lot of power and also is a nice transition. If you want to think about doing video podcasts someday, you can use the same interface to do video there as well. So those are the big four that we're going to talk about. Those that know audio editing software, you can use a lot of I don't want to say DAWs, but you can use a lot of other audio interfaces and audio editors out there. Those are the four we're going to talk about.
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Trent
Audacity is again, great free one that a lot of people like to use. It has what's called destructive editing. So if you put a file in there and you edit with it, and you go back and try and listen to the original file that you had, it is going to sound like however you kind of edited it up and chopped it, it doesn't preserve it as a individual file later on. So that's one con that's tricky with that is you want to make sure you kind of copy your files before you edit and not DASity, just in case something goes wrong or whatnot, you can get that back again, great way to start. And as you get more complicated, get more experienced, some of these other ones were better options because they are what are called non-destructive, which means you can edit each of these audio files, cut them up, change a lot of things with them. And it doesn't impact the original file at all. You still have that if you want to use it for something else, or you miss the section that you cut out and you want to go back and find, you can do that pretty easily. Reaper is a great option. Again, it is honestly on par with Adobe Audition in a lot of ways. It's one time price. It'll take some learning and getting used to the shortcuts, the style, the interface, because it's not something most people have ever worked with if they've never done audio and it's very different than Audacity. So keep that in mind too, as you're getting set up and working with this, take more time than you think it will to learn how to edit, learn how to use these interfaces. And my biggest thing that has been the biggest saviour for me when I have been editing is learn the keyboard shortcuts. Those make it very easy for you to stop, start, cut and all that stuff. So make sure you learn those for Reaper or Audition or any of them. Just learn the keyboard shortcuts. And DaVinci Resolve is free. There is a one-time payment that you can do to get their studio or higher level version. It's about $300 and it has so many features. Again, DaVinci Resolve is mostly meant for video and it has a lot of power and a lot you can do with audio only as well. That interface will look very, very different from Reaper and Audition. And for the price and trying to learn and something that you can grow into, it's a great option. Now you've picked your editing software. What we're going to do now is kind of bring your audio in and that can look very different on so many ways. So kind of read the instructions for your different interfaces, for your different, however you're recording, be familiar with how that shows up. If you have an external recorder, you will have an SD card or some sort of memory that you have to remove from that device. Plug into your computer through some sort of dongle that will translate it that can fit that card and bring it over to where you can edit it. And you can see it on your file explorer on your computer. And there find the files that you're using and then you can kind of click and drag those into your editing software. There are multiple different files and ways these can show up. You want to try and get it so you can just see the one file. Most of the basic ones like zoom, you'll be able to see each individual channel and just grab the channels that you know you're recorded to and click and drag those into your editing software. If you are only recording yourself, you can also use the stereo file that especially like a zoom products I know they have, just click and drag and edit that in and that will have any things that you have put on the board. So if you've adjusted any of the levels or added any EQ or sound effects or things like that that will be applied when you drag and drop that into the software.
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Trent
And this will be another one of those places where you kind of need to play around with are using the individual channels are you using the stereo? How is that working? I like it when I have more than one person recording to use the individual files. That gives me a little more control of being able to silence one section where they were one person is doing big breasts or if we're in the same room. If there's any bleed over from a really loud laugh that I'm hearing on the other mic, I can just close down that other mic or mute get rid of that other mic section so that it's quieter and better and you don't have to try and fight with that in one audio file. You have multiple channels that you can manipulate to get to what you need. And again, a lot of this will be playing around and a lot of this might not make sense. I'm realizing and as you get into it and play with your first recordings, hopefully it will all start to click. And one more thing before you get into editing and cutting and adding in your music or anything else like that, we need to talk about how do you actually set up these individual channels? So for this for each kind of line item are what are called channels. So on the left hand side, you'll see different tracks as they'll call them tracks, channels, similar terminology, just depending what software you're using. They'll call it differently. Mostly on the software side, they'll call them tracks and you will want to see which track is there. And if you click on a track, a lot of them you can add certain what we call them plugins or different effects to and it can be very overwhelming. There's a lot you can add on to it. And those are the things you want to kind of add on before you get too far into it. And we want something that is going to affect everything in there so that you get a consistent sound the whole way across. The big thing you really want to do with a podcast is you want it to sound even the whole time. You don't want it to be suddenly loud and then suddenly quiet. And as you're looking away, looking towards as you get more excited about one part. So really the big biggest thing you can do to get a podcast on and great right away is make sure everything sounds consistent.
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Trent
And there are several ways you can do that. One of the first is going to be putting on a compressor. What a compressor does is it kind of compresses those high end sounds down to closer to match. Yeah, they just compress those higher end. So anything as it gets too high, it's going to kind of curb it and slow it down so it only gets to a height that's not quite as high. And then that way it leaves your sound a little more compressed together and sounding similar. Also I recommend adding a denoise. Most of the programs will have some sort of noise removal, denoise, something like that to get rid of any background noise. Even the microphones and the whole system tends to have just a little bit of noise in it, whether it's just hums or whatnot and that can help get rid of that. You'll also hear people have very high S's and very loud S's in what's called sibilance. And there is something called DS that you can use on that and then the hum as well. So sometimes you'll have a room that just has that consistent hum from a refrigerator, from an AC unit, something like that. You can apply that as well. There's a D rumble that sometimes is used. And again, all of this is a little excessive if you just want to go in and make everything sound consistent at first. I recommend just that compressor. A lot of them will have also kind of noise leveling or sound leveling, speech leveling, some sort of leveler in there where it can help take that sound of your voice and help kind of compress it, bring up those lows, compress those high amplitude sounds so that you get a consistent band. And you see it in either a spectral analyzer or if you just see the waveform of the finished product, you'll be able to tell if it's there because it'll just look like a giant rectangular block. And that's really fun to see when you're looking and you're like, oh, yep, I see it now. It'll also be very apparent when you listen to it, especially in a car or some higher level audio, you'll really be able to hear that difference. That brings me to another great point. You should never edit this from your laptop speakers, especially you want to be using external speakers, monitors, or headphones to edit. It sounds so different when you do it these different ways. And even when you think you're done or something sounds great, make sure you listen to it in a couple of other different sources before you send it off to your client or publish it because you'd be surprised how listening to it in your car versus AirPods versus a high expensive sound system will sound very, very, very different. And you want it to sound pretty good across all of them. And this is where you play to when we make sure if you're listening from the right place, not just your laptop. When we talk about this compressor, de-esser, de-hummer, all of these different things that you do, it kind of is just play around with it.
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Trent
There's a lot of techniques you can do. I don't want to get into all the details because I'm not the person, the expert to teach and help educate you all, but look up these online and learn about what makes sense, what doesn't, who does this best, what are some things you can use. There's lots of great examples online on YouTube, other places, other free stuff online. So follow those, try and play around with it. But again, it ultimately comes down to your ear too, right? Set something up, change one little thing. How does that sound? As it's playing, let me change this. Oh, I can hear it changing. This sounds like I'm in a tin can. This sounds like I have no deep end to it. So find that proper space and that will work. And whatever sounds good to you works, right? There's not really a right or wrong. It's all just different stylistic choices. So play in that playground, have fun with it. Another important part to consider is what's called EQ or equalizer.
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Trent
Again, local online, a lot of them will also have presets for the EQ that you can just kind of test and see, does this work? Does this sound the way I want it to? And don't be afraid to just play again. Why we call this a playground. This all becomes about play. And that's one of your biggest playing areas, honestly, after you've recorded is just playing around with how that sounds right. As long as you have recorded something that is not peaking, you don't have distorted audio and you don't have something that was set too low that you're missing words or anything like that. You can change the complete sound as you set up your editing by changing the EQ and a lot of these other factors. So take your time, play around with that, get that figured out because it'll take a while to get set. And once it's set, as long as you're recording in the same space, kind of same microphones, you won't really have to touch it again. That will develop the sound of your podcast so much.
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Trent
This has been a lot. I realize that. And thank you for following along and staying along. And I just want to make sure you all understand some of this terminology, understand some of the science behind what we're talking about and what these mean in relation to the knobs that you're going to be turning and the buttons you're going to be pressing.
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Trent
And this is also can be one of the most fun parts of the playground. Yes, recording and talking about it is fun. Once you see the back end and the software side and the editing software, it's like, oh, there's so much more I can still change about what it sounds like, how people are going to perceive this and hear it. And so much control you have at that point still to go play, play, play, play, play, play, play, play. This is the playground you built up so much of your playground. You're doing those final tweaks before other people get to hear what you're putting together and the final result that you're working on, right? So make sure you really put together the time, the effort, the energy to make the sound the way you want. And again, doing it once and spending the time on it that first time can save you so much time in the future. And you need to make sure you set this up right before you edit anything else, because it can really change how you edit and hear things and you don't want to have to go back and edit more times than you need to. I know that one from experience.
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Trent
Until next time, keep playing in that playground, whether you're recording or getting ready to edit by bringing your audio into the software, have fun and play with it. We will see you next time when we really start talking about how do we edit and get this to tell the story that we want.
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Trent
Have fun.