The Power of the Podcast: Unlock Your Brand's Marketing Potential

7 Podcasting Tips for Sounding Your Best: From Pop Filters to Room Acoustics

• Pedal Stomper Productions - Josh Troche

Share episode

Are you sounding your best? Here's how to fix that.

In this power-packed episode, we dive into 7 practical podcasting tips that will immediately upgrade your sound quality, without requiring expensive gear or a full studio build-out. Whether you're working with a cheap podcast setup or navigating a tricky space, we’ve got you covered.

Discover how simple adjustments to your microphone set up for recording and smarter mic placement can drastically improve your audio. Learn how to make your voice sound better with proven mic techniques and voice projection tips. We also break down must-have equipment for recording podcast content that doesn't blow your budget.

Struggling with echo or background noise? We walk you through how to reduce echo in a room and the best acoustic treatment tricks using everyday materials. You'll also learn how to use pop filters to combat harsh plosives, and why room acoustics and background noise reduction can make or break your recording.

This is your go-to guide for podcast setup for beginners, small business owners, and anyone ready to make their content sound like a pro. Get ready to transform your voice, your space, and your audience’s experience.



If you're looking to talk podcasting and get more information on how to make your podcast shine, our 30-minute "no pitch" podcast consultation is right for you!  Click the link to sign up for a time. 
https://pedalstomperproductions.as.me/no-pitch

Staying up to date on the latest podcasting news and trends doesn't have to be difficult. We can deliver them right to your inbox. 
https://www.pedalstomperproductions.com/

Want to start your own podcast? https://www.pedalstomperproductions.com/contact-bedford

Book your time in our state of the art studios: https://www.pedalstomperproductions.com/podcast

Join our Discord Server and let's chat about your podcast https://discord.gg/CWk9aUuNtM

Want to read about this? Check the blog!
https://www.pedalstomperproductions.com/blog


Are you sounding as good as you should? And let's even go a step further. Let's say you got a low budget. Are you sounding as good as you could without spending any money? That is what we're going to talk about this week. And as you can tell, I am wound up. I am excited. I just drank a cup of coffee and kind of chugged it. Stay tuned. Thank you once again for coming along for the ride. I'm excited to talk about this. This dives into something that I mean, I think I've done a ton of research on. We do a ton of work with. And it's something that we always strive to make sure that we're getting the best sound. I mean, that's that's a huge part of it. It's podcast. It's audio. As I've said, people are literally inserting this in their ears. You want to make sure you sound good. People will forgive bad video. I mean, they don't want super shaky, but look, if the lighting's not perfect, whatever. They can still see you and they still have a good idea of who you are and what you represent. But if you sound bad, boy, that is just gonna leave a big, big black mark on whatever you are doing. And you really let's let's face it here, you're doing this more than likely as a branded podcast. This is going to represent your brand. The last thing you want is something that is not going to sound good. So let's dive in to some of the audio basics and figure out, what are some of the things that you can do to sound better when you're recording your podcast? Before we do that, to me, quick favor, make sure that you are subscribed following all the other stuff. If you can give us a review, I would love it because that would help other people find this information which hopefully you have found helpful. We are here to help and that's what I want to make sure that we're able to do for as many people as we can. That being said, your microphone has a sweet spot. Unlike your partner, it probably you should be closer to this. And all. Seriously. In all seriousness, being close to your microphone is a big, big deal when you guys look. If you're watching the video version of this, you can see I am right up on the microphone. It is. It's just offset a little bit. We'll get we'll get into why I do that here in a second, but it's very close to my face. There's a couple of reasons why we do that. Number one, it's for clarity. The closer the microphone is to your face, the more clear you're going to sound. The other piece to that is, is if I've gotten comments before on my voice, I sound very, very different. If the microphone is across the room. Why? Bass frequencies have a tendency to die with distance quicker than higher end frequencies. Well, if the microphone is further away, that means it's going to pick up less out and let less of that low end frequency that you're talking about. You're going to lose that fullness in your voice. And it doesn't matter. You don't need to have a low voice. Even if you have a high voice. There's low end to it. There's there's these lower frequencies to it, and those are going to fade out with distance. It's your voice is still recognizable because of the way it works, but in the same sense, it's those lower end frequencies that are going to die with distance. And that is going to it's going to make it sound less full, like right now I'm right up on the microphone. It's nice, full sound. You can hear the highs, the lows, all of it. It's right here. And it's because you're hearing it as it comes out of my mouth. You're not hearing it from ten, 15, 20ft away. It's always interesting to me when I teach the podcast in class, I'm in a class, I'm talking loud. I'm trying to project, and then we go into the podcast studio and inevitably I sit down and I talk with one of the students on the microphone, and they the the look on their face is always like, what a as soon as they hear my voice in the microphone, my microphone voice is very different because I don't need to project. It's right here, right in front of me. I can control my voice. I can get the sound that I want, and it's going to have that fullness to it. Additionally, microphones are sensitive instruments. They are here to pick up noises. You can adjust the sensitivity of a microphone. Now, in many cases, like if you're using your laptop microphone, your cell phone microphone, anything like that, headphones, they're going to adjust that sensitivity automatically. We in the studio here, we want to control it. We have the ability to control it. So we turn the sensitivity down. What does that do that makes it so it doesn't hear those those faraway sounds, those outside sounds. It doesn't hear the Hvac system going, it's hot today. We've had a little bit of a hot streak as of recently, and we're not we're not hearing that air conditioning system just running full tilt to try and keep up. In addition, cars going by with loud radios, sirens off in the distance, someone talking outside of the studio, if you've got the sensitivity on the microphone, turned way, way, way down, you're not going to hear any of that stuff. And you can do that by being close to the microphone. What I typically go for is we tell people you should be able to like, stick your like three fingers. I mean, if you look, it's anywhere between 3 and 4 fingers in between your face and the microphone. That is a good distance. We'll also talk here about like some of the other pieces in terms of microphone placement with that. But in terms of distance, 3 or 4 fingers away from your face is pretty good. Now the other thing that I want to say with proximity is so many people have a tendency to turn their head when they're on the microphone, they look away. And we've all heard it. And I'm going to give you a demo here because I'm going to talk to this camera, and then I'm going to talk to that camera. You can hear it's totally different because they turned their head away from the microphone. What I always tell people, and if you're watching the video, you're going to see what I'm going to do. My mouth stays in the same exact place. I move the rest of my body around my mouth. So if I'm going to look at that camera right there, I've moved my entire body around my mouth. So my mouth is in the same spot. That way, once again, we're maintaining a consistent distance from the microphone. It's something that you need to make sure you're thinking about. Is that consistent distance from your mouth to the microphone? If the angle's a little bit different, that's okay, because once again, I'm going to talk to this camera over here, and then I'm going to be back at that camera over there. It doesn't matter where I'm going because my mouth the whole time, if you're watching the video, you can see this. I'm staying the same distance away from the microphone the entire time. That gives you that consistency will, and it gives you that consistent sound. Because you guys heard it a few minutes ago when I turned my head and actually looked away. You can hear the bass frequencies drop out, all the other stuff drops out. But if I put my mouth back where the microphone, where it was on the microphone before all that comes back. So that consistent positioning is a big, big key for making sure that you're going to get a good, consistent, high quality sound. I typically tell people, record some test clips on your microphone to figure out where it sounds good. And what I do is just announce it because you're going to be the only one listening to this. So say I am one inch away from the microphone. I am four inches away from the microphone. I'm a foot away from the microphone. If you if you say those things, you'll hear the differences as you go back and listen to it. Now I'm going to tell you to go back and listen to it. I always we're going to talk about headphones here in a minute, but it sounds very different when you listen to it later than when you're saying it, because when you're saying it, you're hearing a combination of the headphones and your voice. Whereas if you listen to it just on its own recorded, you're going to hear exactly what your audience is hearing. And that's a key. So another thing that we're going to look at with this is we want to talk about some of those harsh noises that we get. I get so many people that make clicks in the microphone. They when they when they first separate their lips before they talk, they get that click that and you're like That. And it's tough to tough to hear that. So be aware of that. The other one is those harsh P and B sounds. S's can also be kind of difficult. So the thing that I will tell you first off with those clicks is that's just something you need to be aware of. Think about that. That's why we typically suggest headphones when you're in the studio. I'm going to get into headphones more in a minute, but be aware of those mouse clicks and work on those. The next one is is the harsh PNB sounds now in my years of working with microphones, I know how to say p words without having the plosives. In most cases when you talk and people say p words, you end up with that through the microphone like I've had there for the past 2 or 3. That's like I said, those are called plosives because what happens is let's just go into some microphone basics real quick for you. If you've seen a speaker before, you realize that electricity goes into the speaker and it moves that cone. And that's what gives us the sound. Microphones work on the exact opposite principle. Sound moves that cone, which turns into an electrical signal. Well, what happens is, when you make a p sound, there's a huge rush of air that comes out of your mouth. If you hear in your car, stick your hand in front of your mouth and say a word you'll feel. If you'll feel that air hit your hand. When you can't necessarily hear it, but you'll feel it. The difference is, is the microphone feels that rush of air and it just slams that cone around. And that's what makes those plosive noises the same thing for BS. Once again, a lot of people with a B will will have that plosive to it. So it if you can train yourself to realize that you don't need that big rush of air coming out of your mouth when you're speaking and making a p noise, then. But it's tough. I mean, I when I said speaking, when I said p noise, once again, I, I, I still slip sometimes and this is something that I do all of the time. What are some ways to take care of that. Well, let's talk about first off we've all seen pop filters, those those round discs that you'll see in front of a microphone just a couple inches off. They're usually black. What those are is those are basically those are I mean let's let's call them what they are. They're basically black pantyhose stretched over a ring. What that does is that takes some of the air out of it without really muffling the sound. So now instead of this rush of air coming for the microphone, you're just going to get the sound coming through. There's still a little bit of air, but you're mainly going to get the sound. The same thing happens when you're talking about a B, or even in some cases, some other words that have that rush of air to them. Then you can do it. You can get some of the same effect by having a windscreen. We've all seen a microphone with like a fuzzy like foam ball on the end of it. Those will help cure some of that also, because once again, that's letting the sound through, but not the air. Now what? I will caution pop filters are better about this than the foam windscreens, but you're going to lose some high end of out of your microphone because of the fact those will absorb some of that sound to the microphones we use. We typically have really good luck with them. The other thing that you can do is let's talk microphone positioning. If once again you're watching the video and I just had to glance at that screen over there real quick just to make sure that it's it looks right from this camera in front of me. You can see the microphone is not directly in front of my mouth. It's offset just a bit so that most of the air that's coming out of my mouth goes next to the microphone. The microphone is still getting the sound that's coming out of my mouth, but most of the air goes next to the microphone and doesn't go directly in the microphone. It's this little bit of an offset that can make a huge difference. Also, in terms of those plosives, those S's and those BS. Once again, let's make that air go past instead of directly into it. So the next one I want to talk about, I've mentioned a few times and I said we're going to talk about them ad nauseum here. Yep. These things on my head. I am not I don't look like Princess Leia. These are headphones. I'm sure you've seen them. You we've all seen podcast host wearing them. We see a lot of people wearing them as podcast host, and I typically suggest them. There's a couple of reasons for them. First off, you're going to hear exactly what your microphone is picking up. There are so many times when I get people like pounding on the table, and it's like the microphone picks that up. It's it's it's not this. It's not this background noise that doesn't get heard. If someone grabs the microphone, it makes up a huge amount of racket. They don't typically realize that if they're not wearing the headphones, because if you just grab the microphone, it sounds quiet. But if you grab it like that, that was loud. We want to make sure that we are hearing exactly what our audience is going to hear. The same thing is in your voice and how you present. Obviously a my voice does come down when I get on the microphone, and I want to know that. I want to know if I start getting out of my normal range, or if I'm sounding too excited, or if I'm hearing plosives, or if I'm hearing, a lot of S's or anything like that, I want to make sure that I'm able to hear that so I can correct it during the recording. Additionally, you're going to hear background noise. You're going to hear if there's distortion, you're going to hear, maybe your microphones got a background, maybe there's a bad connection somewhere. You're not going to hear that and know that unless you're wearing the headphones now, it's slightly different. If you've got someone sitting behind the desk over there as the engineer, they will notice some of those things. But once again, you should be aware of background noise. Should you stop? Should we? I mean, should we? Wait a minute, is it sirens going by right outside? It should you should you hit pause on things? Those are the things that you'll know by having the headphones on. Because once again, you're going to hear what the audience hears. The next thing that I want to say with that is you can adjust your speaking volume or microphone position in real time. If you notice that you're super loud and your guest is super quiet, well then guess what? Maybe you've got to move their microphone closer, your microphone a little bit away. Maybe you need to talk off to the side of it. Maybe your guest is not sounding well, and it's something that you want to make sure that they get corrected. I mean, we're here to make people sound good, right? You want to make sure that everyone's on on your everyone that's on your podcast sounds and looks their best. So make sure you've got the capability to do that. When it comes to remote interviews, let's say you're recording Riverside, zoom or unfortunately, you're stuck on Microsoft Teams. Headphones are non-negotiable. You need headphones. The big reason being is, and I will explain this is your microphone is in your computer typically on this side on the backside here, it's this teeny tiny little thing. It is about this far away from the speakers in your laptop. So why does that matter? Well, the big reason why it matters is, is we've all been someplace where we've heard feedback. That's where someone has a microphone close to their mouth or too far away. They're trying to turn the volume up. And you hear that he I'm not going to do that that loud. Sorry. It that's feedback. What's happening is the microphone is hearing what's coming out of the speaker and it ends up well what's the microphone doing. The microphone is telling the speaker what to broadcast. Well then here's that. So then it tells it what to broadcast. So then here you get this vicious feedback loop. And that's when you get that high pitched noise. Computers and most of the programs like zoom and things of that nature, use a technology to help eliminate that. But there's a caveat to it. In a lot of cases, they're cutting out certain frequencies and they're going to cut out certain frequencies or use certain frequencies of your voice. So your voice is going to lose that depth. You're going to lose that that robustness to your voice. And in the same sense that computer is trying to process out, it's trying to figure out, am I hearing the speaker mirror or am I hearing the person that is speaking? It's trying to figure that out and decipher between those two things. It's amazing to me, the technology in this that figures that out is absolutely amazing. It's it's it's it's world changing. I mean, think about what happened with, zoom through like 2020 in that holy cow, was that amazing. But you're using a lot of processing, and it's going to eliminate some of your voice in that there's frequencies that it's just going to take out because it's like, nope, this could be feedback. This could be feedback, this could be feedback. If you're wearing headphones it no longer has to process that. So it's just going to pick up all of the sounds which that is exactly what we want from that microphone. Now, the one caveat that I am going to say to this is I get a lot of people saying, I don't have headphones. If you are doing a podcast and you are doing remote interviews, you can get headphones online from 100 different places for like $15. This is the cheapest investment that you could make as a remote podcaster. To up the level of your podcast, get a set of headphones. I know some people want to want to use AirPods, and I guess I would say that's okay, but you don't want to use the microphones in the AirPods. You want to use the microphone in your computer, why? That's in front of you and you're talking towards it. The AirPods are picking up all that ambient sound, and that's what they need that the processing in. That is what they are trying to do with that, to try and get to your natural voice. If it is a microphone in front of you, it's going to know what your voice is and work with that. Let's talk about the the biggest piece that you really should be starting with. Silence. Wait a minute. I thought we were talking about how to sound better. Yes. Silence is the way that you are going to sound better in your podcast. How do I mean that? You cannot. You're going to have a tough time sounding good if you're in a noisy room. The TV needs to be off, fans need to be off. Air conditioners need to be off. If you can silence your cell phone notifications. I don't know how many podcasts I have watched where people are talking away, and all the sudden you seem like look down at their phone like, oh yes, do those things all ahead of time. Find a quiet, quiet, quiet place. Be it in your office, be it in your, be it in your home, wherever it is. Find the quietest place you can now, one of the things that I want to tell you with this is if you're audio only, you've got a whole lot of options with this go record in your closet. Why? There's a ton of soft stuff in there. Sound bounces off of things. So as I'm speaking, it's bouncing off of the walls. It's bouncing off of the windows. It's bouncing off of the ceilings in here. It's not because we've got the foam walls. This wall is is the rock the rock wall set up. But over there is a curtain right behind me here too. Same thing. It's a curtain. And this curtain is set up to make sure that it's got a it's got an insulation layer behind it to make sure that it's going to capture that sound instead of letting it bounce around the room. If we've all walked into an empty room before and you hear the echo, you hear this just high pitched that your voice coming right back at you. Whatever room you can be in that has stuff to it, especially softer stuff. Artwork can even help. Like canvas paintings. Those can do a great job. Curtains put curtains up. A thing that I absolutely love to tell people to do is what you can do is if you buy a stand for them, you can get moving. Blankets. Moving blankets are awesome. They're black, so they let you control the light better. They're super heavy. They're super thick. They just soak up, sound like mad. And they're typically like 12 bucks each. So pick up 3 or 4 of those. Those will be the cheapest way to get yourself sounding better in a room. That's got some echo to it. It's all about avoiding hard, rough sound reflective surfaces, bare walls, windows, large empty rooms. Two options. Like I said, you can record in a closet, especially if it's got a lot of clothes in it. Record in that closet. Ton of things to soak up that sound. The next thing that you can look at with this, I always, I always love talking about this story. Mike Rowe was the host of Dirty Jobs. He used to do the voiceover overs for the TV show Deadliest Catch, in that he was on the road recording Dirty Jobs when Deadliest Catch needed to be like recorded also. So how did he record without a studio? It was pretty simple. He took his laptop and he took his microphone, and he got under the duvet at the hotels. He was at. Yep. It's it's a perfectly dead air situation. There's not going to be any sound bouncing around in. There might be a little warm, but once again he was able to record and sounded phenomenal in those situations. So whatever you can do to avoid those hard, hard surface areas, you need to do that. Next up, I want you to speak with purpose. Consistent volume, clear articulation. This is something that so many people just don't look at. I mentioned before, maintaining that distance from your microphone is a huge key in this. It's it's amazing because as you heard before, once again, when I turn my head away from the microphone, the volume changed, the sound changed. And that can be very, very distracting to someone. The other thing that I want to do is make sure that you practice like enunciating without shouting, without mumbling. Just make sure the words are coming through. Crystal clear. There are words that I stumble with. I am not going to let you know what they are, but there are words that I have a difficult time enunciating. So I do my best to keep those out of the topics that we talk about. I have. If I know a word that I stumble on, I look up a couple of synonyms for it to make sure that I've got another word handy that I can go to with that. Once again, it's just thinking that little bit ahead on those, and it's practicing a little bit. How do I sound? Once again, the headphones will open that up. Additionally, warm up ahead of time. Don't just walk into the studio, flip the lights on and be like, we are ready to rock because you won't be spending five minutes I don't want. I mean, I know there's the the Ron Burgundy doing the tongue twisters, which are great. You could do some of those. Just talk about something, read a script, go over your script, read it. I mean, do a dry run of half of what your half of what your topic is for the day that once again, you'll be warmed up, you'll be in the right space. You you will have spent a few minutes speaking in the right tone. When you get to that point. Two more tips I want to cover real quick. One is the test run. We talked about recording different distances from the microphone. If you're recording solo by yourself, I typically what I will do is I will walk over to the board, I'll hit record, I will then speak into the microphone. I maybe I'll do my intro, maybe I'll do the first piece to it and then I will hit stop. I'll go back and I'll listen to it. Am I clipping meaning my do I have to the gain set to hide it? Is there any effects that I have on that may be messing with how I sound? Because look, we use these studios for a lot of different people and maybe we forgot to turn off in effect, after we had someone else in. It's it's going through. It's listening to how you sound. And from there, if you listen to yourself like, hey, is this how I want to sound? You're going to be able to make those small tweaks, those small adjustments, and you're going to be able to gradually get better and better and better what you're at, what you're doing. But you have to do these tests to make sure that you are going back and listening with that mindset of like, what can I do to get better with this last off, I'm going to reach over to the other side of the desk here. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate and hydrate. Make sure that you have, I mean, keep some water handy. Do not use a plastic jug, or a plastic container, plastic water bottle. Those make all sorts of crinkly noises on the microphone. We'll hear those if you're wearing headphones. A jug like this, I mean, this sports bottle, anything like that where you can sit. Maybe it has a lid. As long as it's quiet, those types of things keep those handy. But make sure that you drink plenty of water ahead of time. Dry mouth. It's just it's bad. During a podcast, I, especially on podcasts where there's someone else sitting across the table for me, I periodically take drinks. I want to make sure that I'm not like this cotton dry, mouth like desert face thing going on. I want to make sure that that having that moisture in my mouth is there. That makes you sound better, and it makes sure that you aren't having a too much saliva in there, but be it also eliminates a lot of the mouse clicks and some of the other items that you may get. So hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. What else do we go through? We we went through a lot and I'm sure on the clock were probably like 2520 six minutes in. And I thank you for sticking around for that. So one of the quick review on this get your microphone sweet spot right up on it, up close and personal. If you want. Get a pop filter for it to make sure that you can tame those plosives. We don't want to like punch people in the speaker, so to say, or punch them in the ears. Headphones. Spend the 1215 bucks. I mean, you can get a better set if you want to, but for crying out loud, get a set of headphones. Silence is golden, so make sure that you are finding a spot to record in that is free from distractions, free from televisions. Maybe the I mean, if your dog barks at the Amazon guy, make sure there's no Amazon deliveries coming. Hang up some stuff that way to to pad the walls so that way you can deaden those rooms. Speak with purpose. Test, test, test and have a drink of water. I tell you, either water or coffee. Mainly because of the fact you want something thin that's not going to stick in your mouth. Some of the other beverages, like sweeter beverages, have a tendency to kind of, thicken up saliva in that and a little gross to end on. But that's where we're going to stop this. That all being said, I hope you found this helpful. Do me a favor. If you want more tips on stuff like this, sign up for the newsletter. We'll have that. We're going to have some more information about this and our upcoming podcasts in the newsletter. What we do with it, it's very simple. It's a paragraph that's actionable for you. It's something that you can use in your podcasting or just any video content that you make. It's something that you can use with that right off the bat. We also give you some links for some other information. If you want to do more research. That all being said, do me a favor. Take care of yourself. Can take care of someone else too. I will see you very, very soon.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Josh Troche

Host