Here's What Definitely Won’t Make Your Podcast Sound Better

I recorded this one on a USB mic at a hotel desk, next to a kettle and some UHT milk I’m going to regret. If you can’t hear much difference, that’s the whole episode.

There’s a quality floor in podcasting. Below it, people leave. Above it, something odd happens: nobody notices anything at all. Nobody has ever finished an episode, turned to their partner and said “lovely compression on that one.”

Most of us got over that floor years ago, thanks to Descript’s Studio Sound, Adobe’s free Enhance Speech button and Auphonic. Nobody told you. So we keep buying things our listeners can’t hear.

In this episode:

The same hotel-room recording played twice, raw and cleaned up (try it in one earbud)Why I stopped swearing by iZotope RX 11Dennis, his vintage biscuit tin podcast, and the gear spiral that took the paint off his wallThe £300 metal box still sitting in my loftWhy February me was only half right about one-click audio toolsThe wardrobe test: a free check to do before you buy anything else

Chapters:

00:00 The same recording, played twice

02:24 The quality floor (and when you got over it)

05:23 Dennis, the biscuit tins and my £300 box in the loft

07:39 February me was half right

10:31 What actually makes a difference

11:28 Your one thing: the wardrobe test