Live Streaming your Podcast - Building a Podcasting Studio

As we mentioned in earlier video live streaming is essential to our marketing strategy. Podcasting is actually a secondary benefit to our main live video productions that we record and stream each week. Our podcast allows us to reach a larger audience of engage listeners around the world that we would otherwise be missing with simply live streaming video. Our strategy includes all my marketing with both Facebook and YouTube using your video content to promote calls to action which Drive new leads to our company. This same strategy is used in our podcast. Our podcast is used to deliver value to our listers surrounding our brand or product or related topic in the industry. This process of delivering value increases our likelihood of converting prospects into new leads and finally into new customers. If you were interested in learning more about our in about marketing strategy that leverages live streaming and podcasting consider reading my book “live streaming is smart marketing.” I will include a free PDF of this book in the notes of this course.

Our company uses Podbean as a podcasting service which simplifies our distribution. It is possible to use free audio hosting solutions such as SoundCloud which we also use for our podcast. Pod been also integrate video podcasting into their hosting solution which is ideal for us. Podcasting hosting solutions crate and easy up loading platform to optimize your podcasting distribution. When you are planning out your podcast you should think about the categories in which your podcast is the best fit. Adding your podcast to the proper categories using the correct keywords and creating enticing titles will increase your chances of being found online.

We have found that promoting our podcast with our live stream available on both YouTube and Facebook is the most effective way to grow your audience. For some reason, most of our audience is visually oriented and they like to watch our live show more than they like to listen to it. So we have been able to leverage this trend and enhance our podcasting audience by live streaming every episode. We will generally produce a visually oriented live video production for the first part of our show and end with an audio oriented production for the post show. What’s a recording is made we can upload it to our podcast and distribution site to receive many downloads and lessons that we would not otherwise have without the podcast. Overall our podcasting experience increases our audience by 10 to 20%.

How to EQ a podcast

• Use a High Pass Filter to Cut Everything Below 80Hz. ...

• Cut 100-300 Hz to Add Clarity. ...

• Cut 300-400 Hz if the Voice Sounds 'Muddy' ...

• A Wide Boost Between 2-6 kHz Can Improve Clarity. ...

• Cut Around 3-5 kHz if the Voice Sounds too Sibilant.

EQ and your podcast is perhaps the most important audio enhancement you can make. Understanding that your podcast is designed for the human voice, we can use basic best practices to remove unwanted noise and enhance the vocals. Male voices and female voices differ in the frequencies they generally exhibit. Male voices range from 80 to 500 Hz and her full in between 100 to 200. Female voices range from 175 to 1180 Hz and sound fall in between 200 and 400 Hz. Most digital audio mixers will show a graphical display that starts at 20 Hz goes up to 20 kHz. Since the human voice generally starts at 80 Hz, there is no reason to include much audio from frequencies blow this area. Between 80 and 120 Hz is the fundamentals of Voice and it is very important for intelligibility. In between 200 and 300 Hz is the boom of a voice which gives it its fullness. Between 300 - 1000 Hz you will hear the reflections of the room with the white tweaking can make the room feel smaller and your sound more expensive. Finally between two and 3 kHz you could add clarity to your voice. Regular telephone calls generally max out at 3 kHz. Between five and 15 kHz is what is called sibilance which provides minimal nuances in the human voice. Anything above 15 kHz is not needed for podcasting.

Armed with this knowledge we can EQR podcast and make our podcasters voices sound great. The first thing most audio engineers will do is apply what’s called a high pass filter. A high pass filter essentially “gives a pass” to anything higher than the selected frequency. This is an ideal way to remove lower frequencies beyond a significant selected space. For most podcasts we can apply high pass filter at roughly 70 Hz. Says the human voice generally starts at 80 Hz we won’t be missing any important information. This does a great job of removing low harms the potential background noise from your microphone. On the other end of the frequency spectrum we can use a low pass filter. A little past filter does the exact opposite of a high pass filter meaning it gives everything below the selected frequency a pass and only affects the frequencies above the selected point. For podcasting low pass filter is generally start at 10 kHz. I have found that low pass filter will remove high-pitched noises from our podcasting microphones. Simply adding Hipas and low pass filters to your podcast’s EQ is the best first step. Further equalizing the frequencies coming from your microphones will require listening very carefully to each podcasters voice.

It goes without saying that the EQing a podcast will require headphones. But let’s take a step back and make sure that the gain on each microphone is set properly. You may need to refer to your particular digital audio mixer for setting the trim and gain structure for your microphones. Generally you want each voice to peek at zero DB. There are many different techniques for combining gain structure and compression which will talk about in our next video. But for now simply turn up the gain on each microphone until you reach zero DB on your decimal level meters. Want to feel like the game structure on your microphones a digital audio mixer are set properly you can start mixing the EQ on your microphones.

Creating an EQ curve for a podcast should I Deleigh enhance the human voice depending on whether it’s a male or female. I like to think about EQing as removing unwanted frequencies as opposed to boosting frequencies. We don’t want to use the EQ to boost the noise level of our microphones. We simply want to cut out unwanted frequencies and select curve the best fits the sounds we are looking for. With a High Pass and low pass filter in place we can create a custom EQ curve for podcasting. In general I like to have a curve that starts at 50 Hz and looks like a hump that comes back down around the 1.5 kHz area. In order to add clarity to the human voice I do not cut much of the EQ around the 2 to 3000 kHz band. This EQ curve is slightly adjusted depending on whether the podcast or is male or female. I think you’ll find the basic queuing for each microphone channel would greatly increase the quality of your audio production. The best part of a high-quality EQ is that the audio processing is done live and does not need to be done in post production.

A noise gate is used inside a digital audio mixer to temporarily mute microphone before they hit a certain decibel level. By tweaking your digital audio mixer to use noise gates with each microphone you can cut out all kinds of unwanted noises. You can use the noise gate function to effectively silence reduce the level of an input when it falls below a certain user defined threshold. When you were testing out your noise gate you want to eliminate unwanted low level voices from an individual and put in only allow the loud or signals to pass through. You should talk normally into your microphone and listen for the space in between words and sentences. You want your noise gate to turn on quickly when your podcast or starts talking. But you also wanted to mute the microphone when low level unwanted noises are present. Depending on the podcasters voice level you will need to select a threshold which is essentially a negative decibel level where you want the microphone to be muted.

If you set your threshold too high it can sound a natural when the microphone gate opens. To help smooth out the gate in process there is generally a function called attack. Attack sets the amount of time from when the input signal reaches threshold to win the gate actually opens up. You can use an attack setting of 35 to 70 ms to help the gating actions sound more natural. On the other end of the spectrum there is generally a function called release. Release set the time at the gate remains open after the signal falls back down below the threshold. Finally you may find a feature called ratio which determines how much the input signal is attenuated when the gate is closed. This ratio allows you to effectively reduce the audio from microphone instead of completely silence again making it sound more natural. This technology is known as downward expander and the idea is to extend the signals dynamic range by taking the quieter signals and lowering the level even further.

Once you have your noise gate and expander sat properly you will find that your podcast will sound significantly better. If you’ve made it this far into our podcasting course you’re starting to hear the find nuances of audio coming out of your microphones and digital audio mixer. I believe you’ll be surprised how much better your audio mix will salad with simple digital microphone gating. Next we will cover using a digital audio mixer compressor and limiter. This technology will help us further and hands are over all audio production a limit what happens on the top end of the decimal meter.

Using a compressor and limiter for your podcast

Audio compression can make any podcast sound better. There are two types of audio compression that we use on our podcast to make our audio sound like it does on radio. On our digital audio mixer will use a basic compressor and limiter to make sure that our podcast voices do not peak. This allows us to limit how loud each microphone can be by reducing the dynamic range of the signal through compression. The second type of compression that we will use come from VST3 plug-ins on our computer. These plug-ins combine EQ, compression, limiting and gating all in one convenient interface to provide a complete audio mixing chain that will quickly deliver a clear, warm and open sound. The compression on a digital audio mixer simply helps us prevent peaking in the VST3 plug-ins take compression the rest of the way.

When you were to need the compression and limiter on your digital audio mixer you will have the ability to self threshold for where you want the compressor to start. I generally recommend setting a high level threshold of negative 1-5 dB for your compressor and limiter. Similar to the noise gate settings you will have the ability to set an attack and release to control how much time in milliseconds you would like the compressor to ramp up and down. Compressors work with a ratio that starts at 1:1 and goes to infinity. A ratio of infinity is complete silence. Compression will occur when the signal is above the threshold and the game will be reduced by the ratio set. For example a ratio of 4:1 means that when the input signal increases above the threshold by 4 dB the output signal is only increases by 1 dB. The higher the ratio, the more gain reduction occurs.

Now that our digital audio mixer is set up with the basic compressor let’s move on to understanding VST3 plugins and ASIO audio drivers in our next video.

VST3 plugins and ASIO audio drivers

VST stands for virtual studio technology which is a standard pioneered by Steinberg. And our podcast we use the ST3 plugins from a company called waves which can be found at waves.com. There is a bundle of VST three plug-ins called vocal which we use to transform our podcast vocals into radio quality voices. It’s incredible to me how intuitive these plug-ins work. VST3 plugins take all the heavy lifting out of audio processing and make it possible for regular podcasts to have simple Controls that perform advanced audio processing tasks.

In order to get the most out of VST3 plug-ins it’s important to understand another technology called ASIO. ASIO is another technology pioneered by Steinberg which stands for audio stream input output. When you were searching for digital audio mixer I highly suggest find the one that supports ASIO audio drivers over USB. ASIO audio drivers allow you to bring in each audio input into your recording or video production software individually as opposed to a single sum of all input. This allows us to apply unique VST3 plugins to each audio input as needed. Regular audio mixers with USB may only allow you to connect you all are you imports and they do not allow you to individually interface with each audio source.

Whether you have ASIO drivers or not, you can still use VST3 plugins to enhance your over all audio production. One of the first VST three plug-ins that would recommend using is called the DeEsser. Have you ever listened to a podcast where excessive uses of the “ess” and “shh” sounds ruin the audio quality? These undesirable high frequencies generally pass through the EQ process and produce harsh sounds to the ear that can be draining for listeners. Luckily, the DeEsser remove these high frequencies while preserving the integrity of your microphone source. What I really like about this plug-in are the presets that come for both male and female voices.

The next VST3 plug-in i suggest for podcasting included in our vocal bundle is called the Renaissance channel. This plug-in also includes presets for male and female vocals the combined EQ, compression, limiting and gating into a single convenient interface. After much testing of our podcast vocals we like to Combine renaissance axx with Renaissance channel. Renaissance axx plug-in has a very simple threshold and gain controls that will boost the overall robustness of your podcast vocals.

The great thing about all of these VST3 plugins that they’re built for live sound processing. This means our audio is already processed and ready to go by the time it is inside of our audio recording software. If you were using all of the techniques we’ve talked about inside your digital audio mixer and these VST three plug-ins your audio is going to sound great and you have reduced and/or eliminated the need for post production of your podcast audio.

I do have one final VST3 plug-in that I would suggest using especially for podcast participants with low voice volume. Waves.com produces a VST3 plug-in called vocal rider which is an amazing timesaver. This plug-in automate the process of adjusting your vocal levels within a certain range that you can set. Well this plug-in is somewhat expensive costing $59 it will keep steady vocals and dialogue levels automatically replace the need for a person to continually adjust levels on your digital audio mixer. The vocal rider plug and works in real time there’s no latency and the performance happens faster than any human could ever process. The effect is incredibly steady vocals and levels in your podcast regardless of how far your podcast participants are from the microphone.

Now that we’ve tuned up or digital audio mixers and in here star audio with VST3 plugins let’s talk about adding sound effects to our podcast.

Audio mastering for live video can be tricky, especially when running a one or two man show. We've done extensive research at available tools for audio mixing, and can't wait to share it with you.

Audio is SUPER important! It’s more important than good video in many cases. One thing you should learn about is ASIO Audio Drivers. ASIO Drivers allow a single USB mixer to bring in multiple unique audio inputs. This is important because you may have a guitar, a female vocalist and/or a male vocalist that all need different EQ and compression settings. Trying to mix all of your audio input sources into a single source in your video production software is limiting and we want to have full control over the latest real-time audio processing solutions.

Quick note about ASIO Drivers: ASIO Drivers usually will not work in Windows if they are not setup to be the default recording device. Once it’s setup properly you can bring in each source in the mixer as an individual stereo or mono audio input.

Here the plugins we are using today!

• Renaissance Axx (Vocal Enhancer)

• Renaissance Channel (Compressor & EQ)

• Renaissance DeEsser (sibilance attenuator)

• Real Time Vocal Tuner (Auto Tuner)

• NS1 Noise Suppressor (Noise Suppression)

• Vocal Rider (Achieve Perfect Vocal Levels)

• Morphoder - (Vocoder Robot Sound)

• GTR3 Amps (Distortion Amp System)

• 
  

All of these plugins are VST3 compatible and they allow us to process our audio inputs in real time.

In this video, we cover the tools from waves.com audio plugins, incorporated with vMix. Check it out!

One of our high-level goals for our podcast to keep it fun and entertaining. Everyone on our podcast team agrees that are audio effects board is the most fun part of podcasting. Being able to quickly hit a button that will play MP3 file with audience applause a robot voice or bell ringing add energy to our conversation. But the only way for this to work in a group podcasting setting is to have a physical keyboard interface. In order to achieve this type of interactive soundboard fax we have used the xKeys USB controller. This controller allows us to create custom buttons map to the exact MP3 files that they represent.

The design of our xKeys controller includes custom keycaps that allow us to draw and write exactly what each key represents. So the entire button pad is completely customizable. Once our xKeys controller is plugged into our windows computer via USB we can map the keystrokes to specific audio files in vMix. I should note that vMix is not the only video production software that supports hotkeys for this type of functionality. You can use a software called wirecast, xSplit or OBS to map keyboard functions to playing audio files.

Our windows computer has a 3.5 mm audio output which is connected into one of the inputs in our digital audio mixer. In our digital audio mixer our windows computer is set to input five. This input is then mapped to each of our auxiliary audio outputs for our headphones. Therefore when we are playing an intro clip background music or audio affect everyone in our podcast can hear when it is playing. We also virtually send the audio output of each one of these audio files into our audio recording software. This way everyone on our podcast can hear the audio and it’s being recorded for distribution later. The audio is also available to our live streamed audience via an RTMP stream. Finally if we have a remote guest calling in they will receive this audio as well. We will cover bringing remote gas into your podcast and a upcoming video.

One tip I have for bringing an audio fax is generally to turn down the audio volume on each clip. We use a service called audioblocks.com to download from a library of audio files for our podcast. Audio blocks.com is a subscription-based service that provides royalty free audio clips which is ideal for our podcast. Generally these audio clips are fairly loud and they do not mix well with our podcast voices unless they are turn down at least 25 to 50% of the original volume.

Now that we’ve covered audio effects let’s talk about mix minus in our next video.

Mix minus is a term describing the process of creating an audio mix that subtracts specific inputs for a unique output. Mix minus is used in podcasting to subtract a podcast participants own microphone from their return audio mix inside their headphones. I highly suggest purchasing a digital audio mixer so this mix minus solution can be handled all inside your audio mixer. I would also highly suggest labeling each cable plugged into your audio mixer including the microphones and headphones. In our podcasting studio we have four sets of microphones and headphones. This means we have a cables plugging into the back of our audio mixer and each one is labeled with its corresponding number. Our digital audio mixer can have up to eight customizable auxiliary output for headphones or other speakers. Inside or digital audio mixer we can select exactly which impacts we would like to be mixed together and sent through these auxiliary outputs. Our podcast also has one additional audio input coming from our computer with all of our audio effects. Therefore each auxiliary output receives everyone else’s microphones and the audio effects but not their own microphone. There is nothing more distracting than hearing yourself back into your own headphone set when you are trying to formulate a conversation.

Creating custom audio mixers becomes more complicated the more podcast participants you have. In our next video tutorial we will talk about adding remote guests into your podcast. These guests will also need their own mix minus which is simply set up through video production software.

The following four step process will help you set up a mix minus system that will be “set and forget”.

1. Label all microphone and headset cables

2. Plug all microphone and headset cables into your digital audio mixer in their corresponding inputs and outputs

3. Select your first auxiliary audio output mix. This mix should include all audio inputs except the microphone that corresponds with this headset.

4. Repeat this process for each auxiliary audio output mix

Now that we have our mix minus set up properly we will move on and adding remote guests into your podcasting system.

Many podcasts use Skype to bring remote guests from anywhere in World into their podcast. This can be done by running Skype on a Windows or Mac computer and plugging the inputs and outputs into your digital audio mixer. You will plug your  inputted audio output into an input on your digital audio mixer which will allow you to hear everything coming from Skype. You can create a unique auxiliary audio output from your audio mixer into the microphone of your computer so that the far end guests can hear you in Skype.

Our podcast is leapfrogging this technology setup and leveraging video production software as the core of our audio effects engine already. We already have an input from our Windows based computer in our digital audio mixer. The video production software that we are already running called vMix supports up to eight video callers with integrated mix minus. Wirecast for Mac users also already includes this support for remote guests.

We enjoy the way our remote collar set up works because we live stream hour podcast with video. In this way if our guests are comfortable sharing their video and audio we can provide a much more appealing visual presentation. Using a video production software like vMix or wirecast at the heart of your podcast has many benefits. I will include a link to our webinar explaining how her podcasting system is connected to a larger broadcast studio for this use case below.

The beauty about our podcasting system is that we have minimize the need for post production. With that being said, the sky's the limit with post production and you can spend countless hours erasing every single breath in your podcast recording. for the purposes of our podcast we put all of our work in the up front design of our audio system to reduce the need for post production. The only post production that we will generally spend time on is trimming the front and back of our recording and applying a normalization and compression to the entire re The only post production that we will generally spend time on trimming the front and back of our recording and applying a normalization and compression to the entire recording. . We do this basic post production podcast editing with a program called audacity. Audacity is available for free for both Mac and Windows but there are other digital audio workstation software packages that include more advanced features such as isolated recordings for every single input (assuming you have a mixer supporting ASIO USB drivers).

Generally when you record a podcast the audio is uncompressed but when you upload it to your podcast hosting solution they’re looking for an MP3 file. By default audacity Will require a plug-in called LAME to export MP3 files. Simply Google lame for audacity to find the required files you will need to export MP3.

If you have followed all of our tutorials on audio mixing and VST3 plug-in set up you should have minimal post production for your podcast. The result should be an amazing sounding podcast for all of the voices from your podcast participants. At this point you may choose to amplify the signal slightly but generally the recording you have should be ready to publish.

Do you want to make your podcasts more professional?

In this video, we will show you how to remove unwanted noise from your podcast. There are a lot of options you can consider to do when it comes to post production for your podcasts. As Paul mentions in this video, one of the best things you can do is make sure your podcast is recorded with the best quality audio possible up front. This means using an EQ, Compression, Noise Gates and other digital audio effects such as VST3 plugins. We cover all of this in our podcasting course and tutorial videos here on YouTube.

Once your podcast audio is sounding great live the next step is to tweak the audio in post-production. Audio post production can be complicated but we are simplifying the audio post-production down to removing unwanted noises. Now we could get rid of many breathe sounds with a high noise gate it can be complicated to use a noise gate this way because it can sound unnatural. Sometimes the only way to remove the sounds of breaths and potentially coughing in your podcast audio recordings is manually.

We discuss two easy ways to remove the sound of a breath in your podcasts in this video. One is to simply use the noise reduction tool. This will muffle the sounds of the breath and make it almost imperceptible. Generally, when you are talking to someone you can't hear them breathing. Because the microphone is so close to their mouth you can actually hear them breathing and that does not sound good on a podcast. So you have two choices when it comes to noise reduction. You can take a "Noise Profile" of the portion of  your audio that you want to remove and then apply it to your entire audio recording OR just the portions of the audio that you want to effect.

Another way to remove the breath sounds is to simply silence each one. In this video, Paul is recording audio for an important commercial so completely removing all breathing sounds is done manually. Depending on your level of audio production you may choose to do one of these techniques or both.

This is an episode from our live show which we host every Monday at 11AM PST 2PM EST on both YouTube and Facebook. The content here reviews the basics of our setup and how it connects to our live streaming system.