How to Start a Podcast

Podcast software: best recording and editing software

• Buzzsprout • Season 1 • Episode 4

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In Episode 04 of How to Start a Podcast, we cover the best recording and editing software for new podcasters.

Next Steps:


Remote Recording Software:

  • Zoom
  • Riverside
  • Squadcast


Editing Software:

  • GarageBand
  • Audacity
  • Hindenburg Journalist Pro
  • Descript


Other Software:

  • Otter.ai
  • Magic Mastering
  • Audio Hijack
Gilon:

What is some software that we're not really a fan of that you see people using for podcast recording?

Alban:

This isn't as common anymore, but Skype it's not 2007 anymore. We've got better options, so shots fired.

Gilon:

Welcome back to the fourth installment of How To Start A Podcast podcast. I am one of your host, John Mart's here with

Alban:

Alban Brooke, and we're excited to have you back. If you've made it this far, it means that you're probably gonna make it the whole way. So you bought the equipment, you've figured out the concept, you know, the format, you picked out your co hosts, we're kind of on the homestretch.

Gilon:

This is true. At this point, you have probably already committed to this. And now you're just like, Alright, now how do I do this?

Alban:

Today, we're gonna talk about software, we're gonna talk about how to actually record these podcasts and edit these podcasts. Well, not gonna do the actual editing. But we're gonna talk about all the software that you should be considering. When we're setting up our package. We've got

Gilon:

some nifty other kind of apps or software that might also be helpful in the process of recording or editing your audio. Yeah. And we're

Alban:

talking about all this at once. Because it can get overwhelming when you're like, I'm recording with this and somebody is like, but do you use this app? And you're like, I don't know if I need that app? And they're like, What about this one? You're like, how do these all work together? What do they do? So this is all the software that we recommend that we think is really good, that you probably will want if there's other stuff you're hearing about, we think is probably maybe a bit more niche focus, it's not for like everybody, and you probably don't need to stress about it when you're starting out.

Gilon:

So let's start with recording remotely, because we've all probably had to do that over the past year or so. And so you talked in the previous episode about how recording in separate places can sometimes be a pretty inexpensive option if you've got multiple hosts. So what are some software that we recommend for people to be able to record when they're not in the same physical location?

Alban:

Yeah, so the same conferencing software that everybody uses two years now since the beginning of COVID. Time is a flat circle, it makes no more sense anymore, does it feel like it's been two years it feels like it's been 10. But if you're used to using Zoom, zoom is a good option. There's so many options and zoom and preferences and stuff. And you can actually tweak it to turn it into pretty good software for recording a podcast, I actually put out something on Twitter the other day, that was, Hey, everybody, like what software using to record and zoom is one of the most popular apps for people to record remote podcasts. And it works well, if you're trying to just everybody have their own Samsung cue to you, and record online rather than in person.

Gilon:

And I'd imagine most of us probably have a PhD in zoom at this point. So it's pretty accessible. It's low entry, you don't necessarily have to pay for any really paid option or version of it. If you want to just hop on and kind of watch your time, it's a really nice option. As far as software goes for just getting into long distance recording.

Alban:

And we'll put like a blog post or a video, I'm sure Travis will link one of those at the end. But we'll put it in the show notes as well, on how to get the best audio if you do use Zoom, because there's a few things that you want to do, we can maybe run through those one turning on HD audio is a little bit heavier on the internet, it doesn't get as compressed as much, but the audio quality is improved Is there any others

Gilon:

make sure that you hit record, I think that's probably the most important is you know, with Zoom, you just hop on and start talking. And you need to be mindful that you go in and actually ask it to like give you the record option. And then the other kind of piece I would say is ask it to record multitrack. So that you know if there's any feedback happening or somebody's audio is a little not so stellar, you can kind of do what you need to do on that individual track. And it's not all interwoven into your audio as well,

Alban:

we should probably explain separate tracks what that means. If we were recording, and all of a sudden a dog started barking in my house while you were talking, that's not going to be a problem. If we have separate tracks, that means that both of our voices are captured totally separately. And so when we are editing, we could just mute me and the dog, and you could just be talking normally, and then it can bring it back. If you have one track your audio editor that could be you can be someone else is going to hate it when they're trying to get those sounds out because it gets really really difficult to do that if people aren't on separate tracks.

Gilon:

Definitely multitrack is really the goal. So

Alban:

we will link that and show you exactly how to set all of that up. Zoom is a great option. 15 bucks if you want to have a bunch of people on there, or you can just make sure you stay under the 40 minute limit. Maybe you can record a couple of different audio files and save yourself in cash.

Gilon:

Okay, what's next? What's maybe a little bit more geared toward podcasting when it comes to recording software.

Alban:

So the problem with Zoom is that it's really just made for video conferencing. And so what's actually happening on the audio level Is I'm talking into my computer, and my computer is compressing it. Do you remember, like, when we talked on old phones actually had a wire hooked into the house, and everyone had a different voice, their phone voice was different than their normal voice? Absolutely. It's because the phone was really, really compressed audio. So things sound different when they're compressed, and they don't sound as good or crisp or clean. Zoom isn't doing that to the phone level. But it's definitely compressed a little bit. And when it's compressed, the audio isn't as clean and crisp. So there's software and what they've decided to do is, you know, John, your voice is recorded to your computer, my voice is recorded to my computer. And then maybe once we were finished the recording or maybe a little bit later, it actually sends both of those up to the cloud. So we have crystal clear audio that's not been compressed. And that's what we're able to work with. It gives us higher quality audio. So the two pieces of software that we use for that are riverside.fm, and squad cast. And they're both doing pretty much the same thing. They're they're saving that audio separately. And they're also doing this for the video. So if anybody does want to record a video podcast, these are really like the top of the top of the line, what we're doing is we're getting those really nice video from your camera, or from your computer, whatever you're using for your camera. It's not getting compressed is saved locally. And it's uploaded when you've got the bandwidth.

Gilon:

So those are two options for you. We like both of those really. And I think I've experienced using both of them for different things here with Buzzsprout.

Alban:

Over the years, they've gotten much more reliable, that's the critical piece for these, right. If they ever fail, then it's like a huge bummer. And those are two that have been around for a long time that have gotten better and better over the years. And there are so many new options coming out. So you know, they've got apps for phones, so that if you're recording someone who only has a phone, they can actually get a really good recording on the phone itself. They support lots of different browsers, Riverside has some interesting features like streaming recording live to like YouTube, there's some clips you can cut up and share to YouTube. So you can check those out for like individual features. But if you want to level up your recording game, beyond zoom, those who wants to look at but you're comfortable with Zoom, and your co hosts are comfortable with Zoom. And you've been doing it for a long time. That's a good spot to start. When I did the survey, it was something like 40% of people who didn't remote recordings, were using zoom to actually record that. So you would not be kind of weird for using zoom, you'd be in good company.

Gilon:

Alright, so we've talked about things that we do like what is some software that we're not really a fan of that you see people using for podcast recording?

Alban:

This isn't as common anymore, but Skype where there is a time when like Skype was the thing? Yeah, for sure. And what you had to do is like you called on Skype, and then you're using other software, like Audio Hijack, we can talk about that later, to record the audio itself. And Skype has gotten better, but they used to, and they still are compressing the audio pretty hard. And I've not seen them be as reliable as zoom. So like in almost every way, Skype is not as good as zoom. And so I would just go focus on Zoom. And if you want to upgrade at squad caster Riverside for you, rather than really considering the going the Skype way.

Gilon:

Yeah, that makes sense. I definitely am have probably used Skype in the past.

Alban:

There's nothing wrong with Skype, except, you know, it's not 2007 anymore. We've got better options. So

Gilon:

shots fired. Yeah. Alright, we've talked about how to record software that's really helpful for that. What a lot of people don't realize when you're just starting out is that where you record is not necessarily always where you edit. So what are some editing software's that you know, people use pretty often? Yeah, what do you use? I like GarageBand. That's my go to, I don't think I'm a very techy person. So I was looking for a drag and drop kind of technology. And that looked like what I could do.

Alban:

GarageBand and Audacity are the two that are by far the most common for sure. And you can guess the reason why the price point is zero. Yeah, that's what people like. So GarageBand if you have a Mac, you get it for free, and originally was made so that people could like, create music and beats on their computer. And that was cool. But then people were like, hey, I can actually record like a podcast and edit it here. It's intuitive. And it's kind of that clean Apple feel. That's like, hey, there's much options that aren't here. But the fact that there's not a ton of options makes it a little bit easier for me to use.

Gilon:

I definitely think I gravitated because I looked at both of them when I first started out and Audacity was intimidating for sure just by looking at it. GarageBand did feel a little bit more intuitive for me and my learning curve. So I definitely appreciated that as well as the $0. I had to spend because we're buying all this podcast equipment, right? So can I get something for free? GarageBand

Alban:

audacity is the other one. It's Mac, it's Linux, it's Windows, everybody everything, but it doesn't look good. And it is definitely intimidating. And one of the downsides is, how can you like too nerdy here, it's destructive editing. So in GarageBand, if you say, like, cut this clip, and like, pull it together, and like part of it's not being played anymore, if you decide to undo that, and you move something back, it's still there. And there's no harm, no foul, you know? Well, with Audacity, when you start deleting stuff, you're gonna have to like Ctrl, z all the way back to a spot to get it back. Like as you're editing it out, it's actually getting deleted. And so it's pretty easy to lose something because it's destructive editing. So I'm not a huge fan of Audacity, even though it is by far the most popular and it's free. It's only popular because it's free. And if you're using a Mac GarageBand is so much better. But we've also got some really good paid options. Yeah.

Gilon:

So what are paid options? Someone here that's not present in the room right now. Is a big fan of one of them.

Alban:

Yeah, I mean, Travis, our producer uses Hindenburg. Hindenburg did that's really, really cool is we've inherited all the software for music. So like all these people were editing music. And then they said, Hey, let's use the same software to edit the human voice. And so you're kind of focused on all these things that are built for music. They're all options inside of GarageBand. in Audacity, Hindenburg came along and said, This is going to be software for the spoken voice. So the is really for radio, for, you know, anything you're going to put out in audio books or podcasts. So it's a little bit more focused. It's also a little bit more money, you have the price point for us Jalon.

Gilon:

So with Hindenburg, the journalist pro option, you could buy it outright for $400. Or you could pay $10 A month annually.

Alban:

Okay, so definitely, we're getting into something more pricey, right? You could test it out, I think they give you a 30 day trial, you could just pay by the month for like 12 bucks a month. But if you're going to be in this for a while, maybe a $400 price tag is something to start considering.

Gilon:

So that's one of the places where if you're really looking to invest, you can record your audio, edit it, can you record an Hindenburg?

Alban:

Yeah. So Hindenburg, if you're recording in person, you can hit the record button, you're gonna want Hindenburg Journalist Pro, so that all the tracks get recorded separately. And then you're able to manipulate, track, edit, cut stuff out, fade in, add music, publish directly to Buzzsprout. Like, all of that is all together. And it's a really nice piece of software. I think if you're a Buzzsprout user, you can go into our partners discounts inside the app, and get a nice discount for Hindenburg. But there's a ton of great software there. And we highly recommend it. There's one other that I personally love. And I would love, you know, if more people were using it, and that's the script. So the script kind of built on what Hindenburg had done. Hindenburg was like, hey, what if we didn't inherit all the stuff people needed for recording music? We'll do it for the voice. And descript said, Why are we editing waveforms? Because what we really want to edit are words. And so I have an English background. I'm much more comfortable writing things, and editing like a Google Doc. Well, what the script does is we record and while we're recording, it's actually transcribing the episode. So you actually end up with not just the audio, but you also got a nice transcript. And then you edit the podcast by editing the word so you see, like where you misspoke or you had kind of a flub for a little bit. You actually just scroll over the whole thing, and then you delete that section. It's super, super nice.

Gilon:

Sounds a little bit like witchcraft, but it is very, very cool.

Alban:

The witchcraft piece of it is even the next level, which is something they call overdub, and that is, if you forgot to say something. This is like, definitely weird. Theory, if you forgot to say something. And then you're like, ah, do I really want to record that? Well, if it's like a couple words, the script will have listened to enough of your voice that it's like, I think I know how you sound if you say those words, and you can type them and then it creates the audio that sounds like you, and we'll drop it into that spot. They've got a ton of stuff built around this so that you can't do it for somebody else's voice. But it's really nice. If you're like, Ah, I said the wrong word I said$40, when the number was actually $50, you can make that change in the script without going and rerecording from scratch,

Gilon:

Wild Wild tech. So the price point for descript varies from $0, they do have a free option, which is pretty nice. And then they have a 12 to 24 kind of price per month, depending on the kinds of capabilities you'd like to have. So this is a pretty nice investment. I think we're talking about software that could be making your life much easier.

Alban:

Yeah, there's so many cool other features like filler word Pro, which I say lots of arms and ahhs, you can just say, find all the arms and delete them. And then it runs through, like I found 200. And you're like, Yeah, take them all out, and it will take them all out. So it can make all the editing so much easier. And it's really nice, because once you're done, you've got a great transcript, and you publish that to Buzzsprout. And we will not only take the audio file, but we'll also get the transcript which we can talk about those in future episodes. But if you're using the script, you're gonna have a lot of benefits there as well.

Gilon:

So on the heels of talking about transcripts, there's some other types of software that we like that I think really just enhance, or at least simplify your workflow.

Alban:

If you aren't using the script, and you still want to create transcripts, the recommendation we have for you is otter

Gilon:

otter is a transcription service. It's one of the ones that we partner with as well. And that little custom code situation within your Buzzsprout account, they are a transcription service that we partner with.

Alban:

Yeah, and we give you I think it's 20% off if you sign up for a year. But what it does is you upload your audio file it transcribed, and it's all done by machine, so it's not very expensive, and it comes out sounding pretty dang good. So it's not perfect, the transcriptions not 100% accurate. But instead of you trying to sit there and type the whole thing, otter is really good at giving you something it's very close. And then you are going through and just like making corrections rather than having to type the whole thing from scratch, right

Gilon:

and like just a little worn in case you didn't hear him, you do need to read it over after it kicks it out to you, just to make sure that it's as clean and as accurate, as you know it to be from recording it

Alban:

with any transcription software. It's important remember, like, this is something that's really nice for people who speak Standard American English, like if you don't have much of an accent, you're probably set. But if you have a bit of an accent, are you using slang, or you're speaking another language, your mileage may vary, you want to test this stuff out, because sometimes it can be pretty far off. And if you're using more automated solutions, the quality definitely changes. And you might need to actually say like, Hey, I'm actually speaking in Spanish here. This isn't me trying to speak English. So just make sure you check. And if you are speaking other language, make sure that the software you're using actually has been trained on your voice.

Gilon:

So next, let's focus on audio. So we are big fans of magic mastering

Alban:

when you've edited your episode, that's the editing, then you've got mixing and mastering. And what mastering is doing is, let's imagine we recorded it for some reason, your mic was like super quiet. And mine was like way

Gilon:

too hot, which is not an uncommon issue. It's like the

Alban:

most common is correct. Let's imagine that one of us had a bunch of background noise that even though we got that dynamic microphone, we're still getting that background noise. Let's imagine that we've just got all these little interruptions, you can become a person who's mastering episodes like this is a full time job for a lot of people. But we actually have on Buzzsprout, some software called Magic mastering that will do all this for you. Yeah, and

Gilon:

magic mastering is basically like we describe it as like an Instagram filter for your audio. So it is not witchcraft, in that it can get rid of sounds that are very much so in there, it might lessen those sounds. And sometimes people will try it out and don't notice too much of a difference. And that may be because you already have some pretty solid audio, right. So it's just an enhancement. It doesn't put things there that are not already present. And it doesn't completely erase things that are very much still present. But it is a nice little filter that helps level things out. Nice little glossy filter over the audio.

Alban:

Yeah. So if I was really loud, it would bring me down. And if you were a little quiet, bring your audio up, and we had some background noise. It's going to do his best to reduce that. And it's just going to improve the audio throughout. And it's automated. So if you turn it on inside of Buzzsprout and you say yeah, I'm interested in that. I think we give everyone a free episode to try it. And if it does sound quite a bit better. You just leave that option on and you don't After stress going through trying to figure out how to also become an audio mastering master,

Gilon:

right, so it's a really cool feature that we offer, it does come at a small fee on top of your paid plan. But I mean, it's just kind of worth it.

Unknown:

Well, you can decide if it's worth it. Sure, as long as we vouch for us, we think it's worth it.

Alban:

The last one that a lot of people really love is Audio Hijack. There's lots of different setups that this is useful for. So if you're using kind of a different setup, let's imagine, I don't know you're using Twitch for some reason, or stream yard or you're using some software that's a little bit out there. It's not one of the ones we mentioned, Audio Hijack, make sure that no matter what you're doing, you can record your voice. The first time I downloaded this, I was doing a webinar, where I wanted to show people me editing something real time. But I wanted for the webinar for people to be able to hear the edits. And what Audio Hijack was able to do is I said, Alright, I want my microphone to be an input. And I want this software to be an input. And I want you to bring them together. And both of those to be sent out over zoom. So you're able to configure all of that stuff together. I think it's just a one time fee. It's not all that expensive, maybe $30. But if you find yourself in one of these weird situations where you're like, I want to be able to play clips or sound bites or something in real time on my computer, look at Audio Hijack, it's got a ton of people who love it, and definitely a lot of rave reviews. So

Gilon:

we have given you so many good things here. You've gotten software recommendations when you want to record long distance, we've talked about audio recording, we've talked about editing, we've even given you some freebies, Travis, where can they go next to get some more information if they want to dig deeper,

Travis:

so that probably felt like a fire hose of information and names of software's that you've never heard of. So I just want to break it down into three resources to really help you dial in the right software for you. So first and foremost, you can find a link to the blog post that Alban mentioned for how to record a podcast on Zoom and all the settings that you want to have turned on to get the best audio quality possible. It really is a great solution if you're just trying to get started and get your feet wet a little bit in remote recording. So definitely check out that blog to make sure that you set everything up correctly. And then there are two videos that will really be helpful for you. The first one is called the best podcast recording and editing software where we compare each of the software options that we talked about in this podcast. And you can see the pros and cons of each of them kind of side by side and get a visual idea of what they would look like to use to record an edit your podcast. And then for transcripts, we talked about otter.ai And that's really our go to that we recommend for most podcasters but Alban mentioned, if you have a heavy accent, or if you're speaking in a different language, there are some other options that will be better for you in in that video botter lays out our top three transcripts services, and I guarantee you that one of those is gonna be perfect for you and your podcast. And as always the links to those next steps and links to all the software options that we talked about in this episode are in the episode shownotes just scroll down on your phone and you'll see all of those links there. All right,

Alban:

well, we're super excited you decided to stick with us in our next episode we are going to start recording. So set up the equipment that you have. We'll talk through how to write outlines what you should be thinking about before you actually record with process that John and I are going through to record this podcast we'll talk about all of that setting everything up running tests, and making sure that when you record you know you're actually getting a recording. So we'll hope to see you in the next episode. Till then keep podcasting via