{"id":703,"date":"2023-08-17T14:43:02","date_gmt":"2023-08-17T14:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/?p=703"},"modified":"2023-08-17T14:43:03","modified_gmt":"2023-08-17T14:43:03","slug":"how-to-maximize-clarity-in-podcasts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/?p=703","title":{"rendered":"How to maximize clarity in podcasts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I use bilateral cochlear implants (Advanced Bionic Marvel M-90&#8217;s). This puts me in the category of podcast listeners with differently-abled hearing. As such, I notice when the voices of hosts and guests aren&#8217;t as clear as they could possibly be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It&#8217;s actually not hard to get there, even if you&#8217;re nowhere near being an audio engineer. Simply following these basic points will help &#8211; a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Don&#8217;t overlap speech. Sometimes a podcast will introduce a clip of someone talking, and then reduce the volume while talking over it. This produces a sense of being on the scene, which is nice, but introduces unnecessary difficulty for listeners with different types of hearing loss &#8211; even a mild one. Instead of dropping the volume of the background clip, mute it altogether when the host resumes speaking. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Similarly, instead of dropping the volume of non-speech background clips, mute them completely. Continue to use them, yes, but mute it when the host resumes speaking. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>No hard panning, for two reasons: 1. It&#8217;s annoying. Some of us with electronic ears use Bluetooth and it&#8217;s just plain annoying to hear speakers hard left or hard right. It&#8217;s not how our brains are wired to hear. 2. Individuals with single-sided deafness lose out. So instead of hard panning, if you feel you really need to pan, make it soft panning. Say, no more than 25%. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>If there is bad audio, there may not be a lot you can do about cleaning it up. But what you can do is repeat what was said in that bad audio clip. <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Volume match your podcast to others. I am a fan of avoiding the loudness wars, but also, it&#8217;s annoying when one podcast is much quieter or louder than others. Listen to other podcasts similar to yours. Download a few episodes and look at their average loudness levels. Make yours a similar average loudness.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Don&#8217;t be all over the place with the dynamic range. It&#8217;s good for music, but not for speech. You want some dynamic range, but your whispers shouldn&#8217;t be super-quiet, and your excited outbursts shouldn&#8217;t be super-loud. Simply going through the episode and bringing up the quiet parts a little and bringing down the loud parts a little will help. If you feel up to it, learn a little about compression and apply it appropriately to your podcast. If there&#8217;s too much dynamic range, listeners will turn it up during the quiet parts, and then turn it down during the louder parts, and then get annoyed and leave. You don&#8217;t want that. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I hope these points help make your podcast great for everyone you&#8217;d like to reach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I use bilateral cochlear implants (Advanced Bionic Marvel M-90&#8217;s). This puts me in the category of podcast listeners with differently-abled hearing. As such, I notice when the voices of hosts and guests aren&#8217;t as clear as they could possibly be. It&#8217;s actually not hard to get there, even if you&#8217;re nowhere near being an audio&#8230; <\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more navbutton\"><a href=\"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/?p=703\">Read More<i class=\"fa fa-angle-double-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=703"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":706,"href":"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703\/revisions\/706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.decibellinux.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}