The Podcast Pedant

So you’re all enjoying seeing real, podcast-related content on the Pedant? Great. The subscriber numbers started taking off about the same time, and I’ve chosen to believe it’s not a coincidence.

There probably won’t be any updates for a couple of days, though, as I’ll be in Houston meeting with these guys. You gotta love a company that flies you in for business, but picks this weekend because somebody’s doing a crawfish boil.

I gave my notice at my day job this week. That caused a stir. I gave three weeks’ notice because I wanted to give them plenty of transition time, and because I didn’t want them to think I had a problem with the company. I don’t. It’s a very good company, probably the most ethical and admirable of the Fortune 50, and I highly respect most of the people I’ve worked with. It’s just a choice between a job that pays the bills and a job that lets me follow my passion.

I realized a couple of months ago that I couldn’t keep staying up until 3 AM every night to get Escape Pod done. It was eating me up. Eventually — not right away, but soon, I knew — I’d have to make a choice between the job and the podcast. So I started formulating a strategy to ditch the job. That strategy’s paying off now.

Tell me you wouldn’t choose the same. Come on. Just try to tell me.

Just a moment ago I said:

And when you’re done, consider putting a Creative Commons blurb at the end of your own podcast. It takes all of ten seconds and letting your audience know that they’re allowed to copy your podcast and share it with their friends may inspire them to do it.

I got an e-mail from a listener that said:

“Recently it was bothering me again that I didn’t have all of your episodes in one nice spot in iTunes. However, this time the Creative Commons bit sunk in and I did something about it! Presenting… Escape Archive!“

QED. Which is Latin for, “Rock on.”

You probably already know about this because you read Podcasting News,¹ but in case you haven’t: the Creative Commons foundation has put out the first iteration of a “Podcasting Legal Guide,” summarizing in thirty pages everything you need to know to probably not get sued. It’s intended as an extension of the EFF’s Legal Guide for Bloggers:

When creating your own podcast, it is important to make sure all necessary rights and permissions are secured for the material included in your podcasts. This is relatively easy if you create all of the material that is included in your podcast but can become progressively more complex the more you include material created by other people. If you do not obtain the necessary rights and permissions, you may get into legal trouble for incorporating third party material into your podcast and for also authorizing others to use that material as part of your podcast. The main legal issues that you will likely face that are unique to podcasters are related to copyright, publicity rights and trademark issues.

There’s an online version of the document and a PDF version. I’ve just finished reading it, and disregarding a few typos and grammar flubs, I was impressed. The most complex section is about music, of course. It points in the same general direction everyone else does (to keep things simple, stay podsafe or get permission) but if you do happen to be insane enough to want to play major-label music, it tells you exactly what licenses you need and why.

There’s also a handy section about implied and express licensing, and misconceptions about fair use, and… Well, just read the thing.

And when you’re done, consider putting a Creative Commons blurb at the end of your own podcast. It takes all of ten seconds² and letting your audience know that they’re allowed to copy your podcast and share it with their friends may inspire them to do it.

1. At least twice now I’ve thought seriously about putting together a site or feed specifically to cover news and current events related to podcasting. Then I keep going back to Podcasting News and realizing that I couldn’t do half the job those guys do, so why try? The niche for commentary and sarcasm is far more open. ↩
2. Five if you’re good at tongue twisters. ↩

Want a fast, cheap, probably obvious trick for noticeably improving your podcast voice? Stand up when you talk. It’s well known that standing straightens the air passages and gives you a lot more power. It’s why you always see singers and voiceover artists standing. I started standing for my story readings and intros when I moved my podcast down into the basement studio, and I could immediately tell the difference.¹

Obviously this trick won’t work for everyone. You need either a tall mic stand or a boom arm, and your content and style may preclude it. Couplecasters would likely find it too weird to chat with each other while standing; and if your podcast is mostly improvised monologue, you may find it difficult to (literally) think on your feet. Some people do it very well, or learn to, but it’s far more important to feel comfortable. Standing up probably works best for pre-scripted content, or improvisation with a semi-formal or formal structure to it.

But if you can make it work for you, and make it natural, you’ll be surprised at the difference it makes to your sound — and, very possibly, to your attitude and confidence in yourself and your podcast.

1. On top of the acoustic and psychological benefits of moving my podcast out of the living room. ↩

This post is adapted from a reply I made on Podcast Alley. The question, from a new member identified only as “flextone,” was about getting started with sound improvement using Cakewalk and/or Adobe Audition:

I would appreciate any tips for getting the best out of the sound file such as what compression, EQ settings, adding any FX such as a little reverb.

The answer, of course, is that there are no universal “right settings” for any of these effects. If there were, there wouldn’t be any need for parameters and controls — just a single “Make It Sound Good” button. That said, here’s the best advice I can offer for anyone looking to find their right settings, based on my experience producing an audiobookish podcast and editing a wide variety of sound files sent to me from the wild.

Before you touch anything:
Take that money you were thinking about saving for a better microphone, and go out and buy a $100 pair of studio headphones from a real music outlet. I mean it. Good headphones are more important than a good mic, because if you can’t hear your podcast you have no idea if you’re improving it. I talk more about that subject here.

Compression:
The best tutorial I’ve ever seen on compression is this one from dbx. The recommendations it makes are an excellent starting point. From there, I recommend you experiment and decide what sounds best for you. In general, moderate-to-fast attack/release settings are better for voice and moderate-to-slow settings are better for most music.

Also in general, it sounds better to undercompress than to overcompress. You’ll know you need more compression if you’re driving in your car, listening to your own podcast, and find yourself having to ride the volume knob.¹ You’ll know you have too much compression if every little sound you make is as loud as your most emphatic speech. This is boring and undramatic, and it increases listener fatigue.

Equalization:
First, you may not need it. Lots of people sound better without any EQ applied than they do with a great deal of fiddly sound sculpting. If you aren’t sure, try it both ways and do a blind test with a couple of honest friends. Don’t ask your spouse or family — they’re probably too biased towards your regular voice — but try to find friends who don’t care too much. (Have them listen with your good headphones, of course.) If you do need it, exactly what you need will depend entirely on your voice and the tone you want for your podcast.

I have an unusually ‘bright’ microphone, and I’ve always thought my voice sounded a bit too nasal, so I use the parametric EQ on my Mackie to give myself a little bit of 80 Hz boost and a moderate boost at 1000 Hz. I think it makes my voice a little deeper and rounder.²

Other general EQ thoughts:

• Experiment, then listen, then experiment some more. Record yourself with a ton of different settings, announcing each setting as you change it, and with frequent “EQ off” breaks for contrast.
• Small to moderate changes are much better than big ones. Just because you can add 15 dB to the high end of your voice range doesn’t mean you should. Ever. Unless you’re producing a cartoon.
• If you’re a man, don’t just blindly pump up the bass in the expectation that it will make you sound like Movie Preview Guy. It probably won’t, and even if it does, nobody wants to listen to Movie Preview Guy talk for half an hour.³
• If a total stranger can tell you’ve used EQ on your voice, you’ve failed.

Noise reduction:
You should learn about this and know how to use it for special circumstances: field recording, voicemail messages and bad Skype calls, that time when you never noticed the air conditioning was on, etc. It always distorts the signal, but sometimes that’s better than the alternative. Do not allow it to become a routine production step in your podcast. If you have noise issues every time you record, find out what’s going on in your environment and fix it. Don’t form the habit of relying on a magic button to fix it for you. It won’t.

Expansion/gating:
An expander is the lesser-known opposite of a compressor: it makes quiet sounds quieter, and leaves loud sounds intact. Depending on your microphone’s sensitivity and your own speech habits, you might find an expander useful for cutting down on distracting breath noises, lip and tongue smacks, etc. It can be useful for cutting down background noise in specific circumstances — it’s kinder and gentler than noise reduction — but again, it’s better to fix the problem instead. If you do use an expander, use it at moderate settings. Reducing breath so that it’s less audible sounds natural; an entire podcast with no breath noises at all sounds cold and alien.

That brings us to gates (aka “noise gates.”) A gate is simply an expander with a very high ratio, just as a limiter is a compressor with a very high ratio.⁴ It makes noises below the threshold disappear. I used to use gate effects fairly often, but I almost never do it any more. It’s too hard to get the threshold and attack/release just right so you don’t lose any signal and the transitions aren’t too harsh. And if you try to use a gate to cut out major noise problems, it still leaves the noise in when you’re talking, so the end result has the “on/off” clipping of a walkie-talkie.

Reverb:
This is one of the most overused effects in podcasting. Don’t apply reverb to your normal speaking voice just because it’s there and it sounds cool. It gets old very fast. Reverb is for music and used car commercials. Sounding like you’re podcasting from an empty cathedral won’t make your words any better, and will usually get in the way of people understanding them. If you do decide to use it, go with the subtlest possible settings that achieve your goal. Again, if a listener is able to say, “Aha! They’re using reverb!” — you’ve failed.

Anecdotal exception: I’ve used reverb for general speech exactly once. It was a story recording I’d received from another narrator, and it had high-frequency noise issues. Using SoundSoap took care of the noise but left the speech sounding noticeably distorted — that “tin box underwater” sound. A tiny bit of Soundtrack Pro’s reverb, using a small room size and a fairly short reverb time, helped to smooth out that distortion and bury it in the reverb effect. Even with low settings the reverb was noticeable, but worked okay in context — the voice for this particular story wasn’t supposed to be a normal human anyway.

Other effects:
By all means, play with everything until you’ve learned what it all does. Unless you have a specific reason for a specific effect, however, don’t actually use them in stuff people will hear. I’ve never heard a podcast where I thought, “Yeah, that guy needs more tremolo when he’s talking about cars,” or “If she’d only pitch-shifted her voice half an octave, I’d have learned a lot more about William Shatner’s butt!”

Most of those effects are gimmicks, and while the Beastie Boys may have uses for all of them, they sound pretty stupid on a single voice in isolation. It may be funny, in a vague sort of way, but “vaguely funny” doesn’t usually last the length of a podcast.

The mark of good sound engineering is that it’s transparent. If you do the job well, no one will even notice that you’ve done it. Your podcast will simply sound good enough that nobody pays attention to the sound; they’ll be listening to the words instead. Having people notice your effects usually means you’ve done them wrong.

Finally, listen to your own podcast.

Other comments and experiences encouraged as always, of course. This is one of those posts that I’m hoping will remain a document-in-progress.

1. That, or you need better mic placement and levels when recording. ↩
2. I’ve only had one criticism: my high school ex-girlfriend e-mailed me to say I was trying to talk too deep and sounded fake. But her experience with my voice isn’t that of the world at large, so I filed her opinion under H for “Huh.” and kept doing what I was doing. ↩
3. For women, I suppose the equivalent sin would be pumping the 6k to 8k range in the hopes of sounding more sibilant and sexy; but I honestly don’t think women go in as much for this particular sort of vanity. ↩
4. ”Very high” may mean “infinite” in both cases, but it might also mean something like 20:1. ↩

I’m getting started this weekend. In case anyone was curious, when you merge the contents of my office and my head and pile them up together, throwing away the obvious garbage, the inbox looks like this:

Tomorrow my job is to eliminate that pile.
Happy Easter, everyone.

Yesterday’s Rocketboom has a very solid interview with Russ Holliman about his startup Podcast Ready and the stuff they’re doing to make podcast subscription easier and more portable. A client that lives on your MP3 player, a Web site for anywhere-anytime feeds access and social “friends” sharing, and a client-side one-click button that works on any podcast site are just some of the features. Oh, and the MP3 players with their software pre-loaded are about to go on sale at major retailers.

Since their PR machine is rolling into full swing, I don’t see any reason to keep quiet about it now: these are the guys I’m doing that contract work for. Nothing on the “outside world” side yet — I can’t point to anything on their site and say “Yeah, I built that” — but I’ve been contributing some maintenance utilities, etc. Russ is a great guy, and I’d say that even if he wasn’t giving me opportunities that might soon allow me to work from home and get more done with podcasting.

Because I have a business relationship with them, I don’t expect to talk about them here too much. I know that may sound contrary, but one of my driving intents with this site is to present highly personal but trustworthy opinions and advice. My take on Podcast Ready is very positive, but also biased for reasons other than their product quality. Therefore I wouldn’t expect you to take anything good I said at full face value; and I won’t say anything bad about someone I’m working for.¹

So to offset any future laconicism, I’ll say it now, with spirit fingers: These guys are making cool stuff. Check them out. And if you have friends and family that just Don’t Get the podcasting thingamahoosit, you could do worse than to point them at Podcast Ready.

1. Yeah, I bitch about the day job. But have I named them? No. And I actually have no beef with the company itself; it’s just not the lifestyle I want right now. ↩

The following was posted to the Yahoo! list today by Charles Hodgson of Podictionary. I’m reprinting it here with his permission. At two minutes a day, I’ve said many times that Podictionary offers the highest quality-per-minute ratio of any podcast in my subscriptions list.¹ Listen to what the man says about his experiences getting the word out on his show. And then subscribe.

Similar writeups from others, BTW, will be more than welcome here. They’ll be trumpeted.

I am offering this up so that other podcasters can evaluate their
own efforts to build audience.

My listenership at www.podictionary.com is in the 3,500 range for each episode. The bulk of these daily (I also have a weekly feed that airs the same material). I just posted episode # 227 and will hit the first anniversary on June 3.

Early on I was lucky enough to get mentioned on several other podcasts. I attribute my biggest early gains to exposure throughwww.thewordnerds.org (thanks guys) and clearly the overlap in subject matter is very important here. I did get some exposure on very large circulation venues but although each of these helped, they never amounted to more than a minor boost (tens to a hundred or so). The exception was a weeklong exposure on iTunes which likely moved me from about 1500 to 2500.

Here is a list of other exposure that has had less impact:

• Several spots on Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code
• Featured on Yahoo beta podcast directory within a few weeks of it going up
• Guest (with podcast mentioned and linked from their website) on the NPR radio program and podcast “A Way With Words” (subject related and major listenership—why didn’t this one work?)
• Two local newspaper articles (Ottawa Citizen)
• Interview on local University Radio & weekly rebroadcast of one of my episodes
• Caller on an Ontario-Canada wide phone in (subject related)
• Small spot in JANE magazine.
• Numerous blogs and other podcast mentions (thanks all).

Other measures I have taken are to attend the local writers festival (my podcast is on words) and hand out cards. I have helped both this festival and some local poets begin their own podcast. I also set up a mailing list, thinking that not everyone is ready for podcasting, but most people understand email. It has attracted only a small following. For my anniversary I have set up a listener drive contest with an ipod nano as a prize and have been fairly surprised at the small number of entries. It’s not over yet, but so far seems like an experiment not worth repeating.

The podcast is a project all on its own, but it dovetails well with a book I have coming out and I have linked the two in my promotion efforts including mentioning the podcast in the Amazon page for my book.

I hope this little story will help others in planning their audience building. The biggest issue is just being there. Keep on pumping out your good quality stuff. Plus, if you have an idea that might work, try it. If it doesn’t work, then try the next one too. Eventually something will work!

1. The runner-up would be Ask a Ninja. Go figure. ↩

…their latest excuse for lousy music is “It’s Elliott Spitzer’s fault.“

Yes, that’s right. They can’t play any good music because they’re not allowed to take bribes. They’re saying that. In public. With straight faces.

Now, I’m not one of these “Podcasting will kill radio” zealots. I honestly don’t think it will.

But somebody should.

I just spent a few hours here catching up on e-mail and sending out some necessary Escape Pod correspondence.  Didn’t quite wipe out my two months’ backlog of stuff, but I made a dent.

About half a dozen messages went to other podcasters with questions or requests.  Replies came back pretty much instantaneously.

What do I learn from this?

1. Every podcaster in the world except me answers their e-mail promptly.  I’m the solitary schmuck.
2. Every podcaster in the world is on e-mail the middle of Saturday night.

What’s up with that?  I know I don’t have a life, but doesn’t someone out there have one?  Or at least rent one?