YOU SOUND AWESOME

SOUNDs-AWESOME process

It’s taken me 15+ years of audio editing to develop this process - and you can put all that experience to work for you when you hire me.

Here’s an overview the steps, but not all the details because, well, those are my secret sauce to making you sound awesome. I’ll make sure your episodes are perfectly mixed, mastered, edited and cleaned up so they’re ready for your listeners’ ears no matter where they’re listening from.

Even with years of experience, the process takes me about 3.5X the length of the raw audio to complete!

🤓 Yes, yes I know this is super geeky and I love it!

STeP 1: YOU RECORD

All you have to do is submit your episode through a simple portal including uploading the episode raw audio and a few details. I’ll take it from here.

step 2: optimize individual trackS

Compress, balance loudness and equalize the audio quality on each track (person) separately. I never do a mass edit of all tracks at the same time because it’s a lazy short-cut that results in crappy audio. To get pro audio, each of these steps must be done separately for each track because every person produces different audio based upon the room they’re recording in, their microphone, individual voice intonations + timbre and a bunch of other factors.

step 3: clean up individual tracks

After I load in individual tracks, I visually check through the episode to locate and fix crosstalk and/or unwanted noises on non-speaker tracks. E.g. if John’s dog is barking and Jim is bumping his desk while Jane is speaking, I’ll remove John’s and Jim’s unwanted noise.

step 4: master audio

Now that the individual tracks are cleaned up and optimized, I export them into one track which I then master and level to the podcast industry standard loudness (-16 LUFS) to ensure an easy and balanced listening experience no matter where the listener listens from.

step 5: process your specific edits

Though I listen through the entire episode to edit, it still helps to have specific edits sent over ahead of time and it’s necessary if it’s content based such as the following examples:

• “Please remove 22:34 - 23:13 where the guest speaks about his book which he decided he doesn’t yet want to talk about”

• “Take out my joke at 33:26 - 33:53.”

• “Remove 41:33 - 41:45 and replace with audio I recorded at the end. I messed up the dates on my upcoming program.”

STEP 6: listen-through editing

At this point, I’ll listen through the entire episode to edit, optimize and customize the audio content based upon your individual podcast sound. This is very important because you have your own unique style and your podcast needs to sound like the best version of you (plus your co-hosts and guests, if applicable). I’ll remove awkward pauses. Add pauses if needed. Remove unwanted noises such as lips smacking, loud breathing, dogs, neighbors, kids, page turns, cell phone interruptions, and electronic hums such as your laptop fan. I’ll fix lags and skips caused by an unstable internet connection. I’ll also soften harsh “p” and “s” sounds. I listen on the highest definition headphones and studio-quality speakers to hear all of the nuances down to your stomach growling. Not everything is fixable, but if it is, it will get done.

STEP 7: STITCH IT TOGETHER

Stitch together the episode audio content with your common audio elements such as your intro and outro, all the while making sure levels and qualities of sound are matching at at industry-standard levels.

STEP 8: ANALYZE SOUND WAVEforms

Analyze visual sound waveforms to check for unwanted spaces and soft or loud peaks. Fix anything that’s not perfect. The Sounds Awesome Process includes double and triple aural and visual checks along the way.

STEP 9: CREATE LIVE FILE + meta data

Create a high-quality audio file leveled at -16 LUFS (podcast-standard volume/loudness) and add the list of meta-data to the audio file including podcast name, host name, and everything else.

STEP 10: LOAD EPISODE to host

Load the episode into to host to then populate the podcast players (directories) including the audio file and all of the necessary episode data. Schedule it be published on the date and time you want. The directories include Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Podcasts and 50+ more.

STEP 11: REVIEW + FINAL EDITS

If requested, the audio file will be sent back to you for review and edits will be processed. You’ll also receive the html embed code to power your website audio player along with audio clip(s), when applicable.

STEP 12: CONFIRM that it’s published

I’ll check to ensure that the episode went live and will alert you if it didn’t. Then I get right on troubleshooting and fixing the problem (this rarely happens when I handle your editing + publishing).

STEP 13: CHANGES

If you need to change anything even after the episode goes live, no problem. Just let me know and I’ll get on it.

STEP 14: STORAGE + ARCHIVE

I store the editable, project episode files and data plus the final, edited episode so that we always have these files.