[FAQ]

G’day all,

My podcast is going pretty well, and I’m finally confident with my own audio quality for my solo episodes. Now, I’d like to start bringing on some guests, many of whom are overseas.

My biggest worry is the audio quality. I know a bad connection can make a call sound terrible, and I really don’t want to put out an episode that’s full of digital artifacts or dropouts. I tried recording a chat on Zoom once and it sounded quite compressed and unprofessional.

What’s the best practice for this? Is there a method or a type of software that everyone uses to make it sound like both people are in the same room?

[Jeff Bullas]

An excellent question that separates amateurs from pros.

Short Answer: The best way is to use a “double-ender” recording technique where both you and your guest record high-quality audio locally on your own computers.

This approach makes the internet connection’s stability irrelevant to the final audio quality.

The process has a few key parts. The first is pre-interview preparation, where you must ensure your guest has a decent microphone and wears headphones to prevent their computer speakers from bleeding into their audio track. The second and most critical part of the technique is that both you and the guest record your own audio separately and directly onto your own computers; this captures the raw, uncompressed sound at the source. A third, wise step is to also record the audio from your live call software as a backup in case one of the local files fails. After the conversation, the guest simply sends you their high-quality audio file to be synchronised with yours in post-production. Relying solely on the live call’s audio is a common mistake that guarantees a low-quality, unprofessional result.

Cheers,
Jeff

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