How to make a podcast

Enough people over the years have reached out to ask about how we made the Safe as Milk podcast. Lessons learned, hardware, and software, that I put together this write up below. Learning to make a podcast was among the many reasons we made a podcast.

The short version:

We almost exclusively recorded apart from each other in our own homes. We get on a voice call to have the conversation. We each record our own end of that conversation into a track that is just our one voice. We combine those two tracks into one conversation in the edit and do a light-ish content pass (mostly umms and ahhs). Then we upload to our hosting service, where it shoots out all over the web for folks to listen.

The long (and detailed) version:

• Conversation: We use Discord to have the conversation. We do not record our discord conversation however. Some people do it as a backup in case the main recording fails, we have never had this happen. Knock on wood. Some do it to use as the file for their podcast. In my experience that approach produces crappy audio quality for the listener.

  • Extra thoughts: We have used Skype, Google Hangouts, and recently switched to Discord. We stopped using Skype when it started to suck. We switched away from Google when they put an hour time limit on conversion with three or more people (this caught us with guest in the Fall). Discord works, but as long as you can hear the other person, the VOIP (Voice Over IP) service doesn’t matter all that much.

• Recording: We both record our parts separately and then combine the tracks in the edit later. Mike uses Garageband and I use Audacity. What software you use probably doesn’t matter, as long as those waves are bouncing. The important parts are:

  • Sync the recordings – We count down “3, 2, 1, recording” and both start at the same time. This will make the edit way easier later. Some people use time.is for a more precise start time E.g. “Start recording at 9:05:10”. This probably isn’t necessary for 2 people, but gets more useful the more people you have in the mix.
  • Headphones – You need to hear the conversation, but you want to prevent your co-host voice from bleeding into your mic/audio recording. You can edit out bleed through, but it is a nightmare sometimes, best to avoid it at the start.
  • Mic technique – Staying in front of your mic as you speak and maintaining your proximity to the mic are probably the two biggest factors to a good quality recording. Well that plus finding a quiet place to record.
  • Room tone – Recording complete silence in the room is very important practice for in person recording. If you are doing two track recordings you will probably have what you need to do noise reduction (see below) in the edit while your co-host is speaking and you aren’t.

• Editing: We each record our own track and then combine them in Audacity. I have tried others like Audition. I always come back to the simplicity of Audacity, plus its free. My process is usually as follows:

  • Sync the audio tracks – Line up the two tracks, listen to the timing of the conversation, adjust, rinse and repeat till it sounds right. Audio drift can be a problem, but one we rarely run into. There are all kinds of things that can cause it, hardware, length of recording, etc. Since we don’t deal with it generally I will let others speak on it.
  • Noise reduction – Audacity has this as an effect, but every audio editing tool will have some version of it. You basically sample part of a track that is “silence” and then let the effect run through the whole track and it automatically looks for similar low level audio and quiets it. E.g. if you let it know what a low hum or white noise sounds like it would find other examples and fix them.
  • Normalize– Brings the lows up and knocks the highs down. Essentially a whisper is easier to hear and a yell doesn’t blow out someone’s speakers.
  • Umms and Ahhs – My approach is to take out the egregious pauses and mental bridges every human uses in conversation. Take out too many and you will make the recording sound too perfect (less human) and waste your time in the process.

• Hardware: I guess I could have covered this in the recording, but really it is a comment or two on mics. Any mic will do really and USB mics are the easiest. There are loads of USB mics that are good for $60-100. I used a Blue Yeti for the first 6 years of the 7 years we’ve recorded. Only recently did I spring for a Shure sm7b, a nicer XLR mic. The space you record in is as important, if not more important than the mic you use.

• Hosting: We started on SoundCloud and it worked, but was pretty barebones. We moved to Fireside when they first came on to the scene. We like them a lot, they make a lot of the podcast specific stuff easy.