6 Tips to Record High Quality Podcasts for Beginners

Are you planning on starting a podcast? If so, you need to understand that it is not as easy as it looks. One might assume that all it takes to record good podcasts is a decent conversation and some good recording equipment. However, a lot goes into recording podcasts, even more so if you plan to record them live. 

Remember, no amount of editing will fix a lousy podcast! As such, ensuring that you know what you are doing will maximise your chances of high-quality results that you can be proud to share with your audience. That being said, here are some top recording tips to help you record quality podcasts even as a beginner:

1. Warm up 

You are going to do a lot of talking. If you do this cold, you will make a lot of mistakes. Warming up can ready your mouth and vocal cords to ensure you do not stumble in your sentences. It can also help you speak loudly and clearly, so take a few minutes prior to the recording session to warm up!

2. Mind your breath

When speaking, you should know how to inhale and exhale. To do this, sit up straight and talk with smaller breaths. If you need to take a deep breath, move your mouth away from your mic. This stops any breathing sounds from getting recorded, which can hurt the quality of your recording.

3. Wear headphones

You can do recordings without headphones. However, you risk audio feeding back into the microphone. To stop this from happening, make sure to wear headphones. If you have guests, have them wear headphones too. This will help you create cleaner audio that you do not have to worry about cleaning up.

4. Record the silence

You will want to record the silence in your recording room because you want a sample of your background noise. You can use this file to clean out the background noise in your recordings, using software features to eliminate the sound. Audacity is a brilliant, open source, bit of software that can help you get rid of background noise.

5. Record in a quiet place

 

Do your best to find the quietest environment possible. If you are recording at home, you can shut your windows and doors, turn off any unnecessary machines, mute your phone, and place your pets elsewhere. You can also fill the recording room with couches, pillows, and other soft things to absorb sound. This will help you create a quieter environment for clean recordings. There’s only so much I can do to eliminate the noise of seagulls where I live!

6. Stay as still as possible

The more you move, the more noise you will generate. Stay as still as possible, and try not to wear anything loose or noisy. For example, if you are wearing headphones, try to keep the wires from touching anything. If I’m not careful my headhone cable rubs on my t shirt and makes a scratching sound, and my chair is a bit creaky. Any noise generated can, and probably will, get picked up by the microphone.

Conclusion

You can implement many other tips in your podcast recording, such as investing in good equipment, testing before starting, and keeping your eyes on volume levels to make sure everything is good. These tips may sound like an effort to apply, but trust us when we say that you’re better off exerting effort to create clean recordings from the get-go rather than cleaning up the audio file later. 

Once again: no amount of editing is going to fix a bad recording. Having a good recording right away will allow minimal editing and post-processing.

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