If you’re just starting out mixing and tweaking your podcast it’s easy to get lost among the things you need. In this post I’ll talk about four processors that are near essential to a well sounding podcast. They’re all available in both hardware and plug-in formats.

It’s also important to note that there are many, many variations of these. You can get anyone of them for nothing at all or you can pretty much pay how much you want for the top notch hardware stuff. The “cheaper is better” rule doesn’t apply though it’s an indicator.

EQ

The EQ is every sound tweakers best friend. In podcasts you’ll probably most often use it sparsely, especially if it’s one alone voice. Still, cutting out some low-end rumble and perhaps even boost a little at the tops for some clarity can make the overall sound better.

Previous posts on EQs:

EQs – the basic controls
EQs – the what’s, why’s and how’s

Compressor

When I listen to radio today, especially commercial radio, I’m almost disgusted by how much compressed it is. I’m not only talking about the music here, I’m talking about the show hosts and what not. Compression on the voice usually helps however. While you don’t need to take it to the extremes like many radio stations have, you can often go a little more wild on it than many would on a singer. It simply helps to smooth things out a little.

Previous posts on compressors:

Compressor – when you don’t want dynamic results

Limiter

Limiters are often used for smacking up the levels to the extreme, but they are more than that. Limiters are very useful tools even for just leveling the very highest peaks to prevent clipping as well.

Previous posts on limiters:

Dynamics own brick wall – the limiter

De-esser

Are you a sibilant speaker? Or did you just happen to be it today? The de-esser can really save your butt. If you sit down and tweak your track with a de-esser it’s easy to loose grip of how much it’s actually doing. Listen back to both the processed and the unprocessed track the day after and you will see what a huge difference it makes. It can really make something sound good as opposed to annoying… Or it can make you sound like you lisp. Not that I know why you’d want that, but who am I to judge.

Originally posted on September 4, 2008 @ 12:24 am