Poor audio quality is the most commonly cited reason for listeners turning off a podcast episode. It can also give listeners a bad impression and negatively affect your reputation. So, in the interest of growing an audience, we want to ensure our podcast episodes sound as good as possible!
This all begins with capturing a quality recording. Editing can help to a degree, but only to a limited extent. We always want to focus on getting great audio up front, rather than expecting to fix it later.
Whether you’re recording solo or interview episodes, there are some basics you should always strive for:
- Invest a decent microphone. The built-in microphone of your laptop isn’t going to cut it.
- Always use headphones if you’re remotely interviewing a guest, do not have their voice coming out of your computer speakers.
- Choose a room with as little noise and echo as possible.
- Use a wired internet when possible rather than WiFi. Pause or close bandwidth-intensive applications such as Dropbox.
For recording interviews with remote guests, we suggest podcast-specific platforms like Squadcast or Riverside. Zoom is acceptable but not quite as high of a quality. There are some settings changes you can make in Zoom to ensure the highest possible quality recording – feel free to contact us to discuss this further.
If you aren’t already preparing your guests ahead of time for the interview, check out our free Guest Prep Sheet.
If you’re recording solo episodes, you can capture higher quality recordings with software such as Audacity, QuickTime, GarageBand, etc, depending on your needs.
Finally, if you record interviews with in-person guests, there are many more variables and things to consider for an optimal recording. We can discuss this one-on-one to ensure you’re setup for the best results!
