19: Setting Up Your Recording Space
So, you've recorded the first piece of audio for your podcast. How did it sound?
If it came out sounding great before you even began editing it, fantastic! You're one of the lucky few who already have a great place to record.
However, most of us aren't so lucky.
Was there a lot of static or white noise in your recording?
Did your audio have an echo to it?
Did your voice sound far away or hollow?
Were you able to hear noises in the background you didn't even notice while you were recording?
All of these are very common issues for podcasters.
The good news is that all of these can be improved, or even completely eliminated, with just a few tweaks to your recording space.
Take a listen to the episode to learn more ... and to find out why I didn't cover this before your first recording session!
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Transcript
Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more. Welcome to Episode 19 podcasting for coaches. So last week, we went over some very, very basics to editing and mixing your audio recordings using Audacity. This week, we are actually going to talk about setting up your recording space so that it can sound as good as possible. Now, you're probably wondering why the heck Didn't we talk about this before we started actually doing any recording. And as I mentioned last week, there is a method to my madness, I firmly firmly believe that the best and pretty much the only way you're going to improve your audio quality, your sound, your speaking techniques, all of those things is for you to hear how bad it is to begin with. Now, some people have great quality right off the bat, you know, they listened to all the product recommendations, they have everything set up just right. And they just so happened to have a fantastic recording space, with little to no background noise. And that is amazing. And I love taking those people on as clients, it makes my job so much easier. But unfortunately for most people, that is not the case. That's not even the case for me. But unfortunately, I found that most people I work with don't understand the importance of setting these things up and setting yourself up for success and getting a quality recording from the start. They tend to think that I can just fix anything in post production as I edit it. And I can't fix a lot of things that is true. But there are just some things that I cannot fix. I have people who record in a busy space where there are people walking by in the hallway all the time. And they wonder why I can't remove that I have people recording in a space with hardwood floors and vaulted ceilings. And the echo is just insane. And yes, I can reduce that a little bit. But I can't get rid of it completely. I have people who record their interviews and they don't wear headphones. And they don't understand that their microphone is picking up not only their voice when they talk, but it's picking up their guest voice as it comes out of their speakers, which makes it 1000 times more difficult to edit. And so until they really hear these things for themselves, and they try and edit them for themselves. They don't understand what makes it so difficult. They don't understand what the real issues are, and how just a few simple tweaks can prevent those entirely in the future, and help you have a better quality recording. You know, there are all kinds of cliches, but basically it boils down to the better quality you have to begin with the better quality you're going to have at the end. So you may have noticed that when you listened back to the recordings for your intro, and outro, it didn't really sound as good as you thought it might. You're wondering, Well, why the heck did she have me choose this microphone or use this program. This sounds terrible. And it's generally probably because something in the recording space is not ideal. So one of the things that we want to avoid while we're recording or of course being in a noisy area. The reason that I choose the ATR 2100 is because it doesn't pick up nearly as much of those background noises. As a lot of other microphones, especially the Blue Yeti, which is probably the next most commonly used microphone, their recording environment isn't as important, but it is still extremely important and it cannot be ignored. So you need to absolutely be in a quiet space when you record. The reason I actually record in a spare guest bedroom is because it is as far away from the street in front of our house as possible it is in the back of our house. If I were to sit in the living room, which is where I normally have all my conference calls with my clients, it's where I do my work. Usually I have a little desk set up there. If I were to record there, you would hear so many cars going by even with the window shut. So just removing yourself from the noise as much as you possibly can is going to help tremendously. telling others in your household when you're recording is going to help if someone has music playing in another part of the house, maybe it has heavy bass, and that's going to be picked up. Another thing to consider when it comes to your ambient noise in the room is your air conditioning and your heater. So many people forget about these. These can be extremely loud sometimes. And you live in your house. You hear these things all day long, so you don't even register them anymore. You don't notice when they kick on or off. Unless there's a problem generally, you're just so used to it that you can tune it out. However, your listeners don't know that they're just going to all of a sudden hear that there's a bunch more white noise in the background. And yes, you can remove that if you know where to look for it in your recording, but it's such a huge pain. So whenever you record just shut off your heat and your air conditioning, I know it will make things uncomfortable. Believe me I know that. But whenever I do interviews or I record it gets shut off. We actually live in a house that doesn't have air conditioning because for some reason people in Colorado are crazy and they don't realize it still gets up Like nearly 100 degrees here. And so air conditioning is not standard in most places here. So we generally live with a ton of fans going all the time. But whenever I record, I turn off all the fans, even the ones downstairs, I don't want any part of that getting into a recording. So again, really set yourself up for success by removing yourself from as much background noise as possible. Next, we want to focus on your room in general and what it is set up like so do you have hardwood floors? Are you recording on a desk that has a glass top? Do you have a bunch of windows? Do you have a bunch of mirrors? Do you have anything on your walls? Do you have high ceilings, all of those things are going to make the sound bounce like crazy, which means it's going to sound echoey, it's going to sound hollow. And those are things that yes, you can do a little bit of tweaking on in post production. But you will never ever, ever make it sound as good as if you just stop those things from happening in the first place. So what we want to do is prevent your sound from bouncing, we want to prevent those audio waves from bouncing on the hard floor, the windows, the mirrors, the glass, desktop, really just any kind of flat desktop, you know the walls, all of those things. So you can spend a bunch of money and invest in acoustic panels to cover every inch of your floor and, you know, get carpeting in the room and do all kinds of these crazy things, you can spend a ton of money you can create a recording studio in your home. Or you can do a few simple things that don't cost nearly as much money and are almost just as good. So what we want to do on the floor, if you can get a large area rug, and at least have it right underneath you. For your desktop, just set a towel down or a blanket, that's all you really need to do there. And same thing for the mirrors and the windows. If you have blinds, make sure those are shut if you have curtains even better, because those are going to absorb the sound. Rather than bouncing them off like blinds will make sure those curtains are shut, put towels or blankets over your mirrors. If you can put things on your walls, definitely do that. But make sure they're going to be things that absorb sound and not bounce sound back. So a crazy thing that some people will probably never think of is mattress foam. Honestly, just like a mattress foam topper, put those on your walls and you're good to go. Is this going to look tacky? Absolutely, it's going to not look so great. So if you really care about the aesthetic of it, if you're going to be doing a lot of video interviews, or you have other people that come in your house and may see this recording space, maybe go a little bit more of a professional route, as opposed to doing all this. But if you really need to DIY and bootstrap this thing so that it is as cheap as possible. That's the route you can go for sure. Another thing you can also do is either buy or build a mini sound booth. And when I say a mini sound booth, what I mean is literally just a box that goes around your microphone, and it will help absorb some of the sound as you speak into it, it will not get all of it. So I recommend doing a combination of as many of these things as you possibly can. And I will have links in the show notes to a couple that you can purchase online. Of course, those are going to be more expensive. And I will also have links to some YouTube videos where they have tutorials for how to DIY this thing. You literally just go get a plastic tub from Walmart, you put the foam inside of it, you cuddle holster, your microphone fits, and you're pretty much good to go. So to find the show notes, just go to podcasting for coaches.com and click the podcast tab. This is episode number 19. And lastly, I do want to talk about your actual microphone placement. I know we have talked about this before I talked about this in Episode 17 when we first began recording some actual you know audio files, but this is part of your setup as well. Because if you have the ATR 2100 It comes with a three pronged you know, little desktop stand you have to hunched over it, it's not so great, you might have to put some books out which you know, puts it in front of your face, or you can get a boom arm and have it sitting on your desk and it's positioned right in front of your face. So that I consider part of your recording setup in space as well. Because if you don't have a proper desktop to be able to do that with because it does have a little clamp so it needs a surface clamp on to then you may need to get something like that so that you're not hunched over all the time of speaking so that you can sit up straight project your voice sound more clear. I do have a client who actually records in her closet, which is another thing I'm going to mention. And she uses a like a nightstand she had a spare nightstand a little you know dresser in her closet that she sorts some things in and that's what she uses, but it doesn't have enough of a lip that she can use a boom arm. So that's something she had to consider, you know, did she need to get something else that she can record better? Or can she make that work. So that is something that you need to think about when you're putting together your recording space and figuring out what is going to be the best solution instead of for you. Now as I mentioned, I do have a client who records in her closet. I actually used to record in my closet in our old house. We had huge ceilings, giant open rooms and there just was no space that I could turn into a good enough recording area. And so I would record in my closet and that is generally as crazy as it sounds going to be the best place to record in your home unless you have a dedicated recording studio set. up. And the reason for this, as you can probably guess, is because the close absorbs so much of your sound, it does not bounce around nearly as much as it does in a room where there is nothing hanging on the walls, no cloth, no fabric, those kinds of things. So if you have a good sized walk in closet, and you can get a little table to put in there, and you're not doing video interviews, that is absolutely going to be a fantastic place to record. If you're okay with tearing it down and setting it up each time of course, because I'm sure you probably don't want a table in the middle of your closet. And if you have a partner, they're probably not going to be very happy about that either. So again, the general theme here is get away from as much noise as you possibly can, and cover up all the hard services that you possibly can. Another one that I forgot to mention a little bit earlier was carpet squares, you can go and get carpet squares at almost any major place, or you can purchase them for fairly cheap any place that sells flooring, and you can use those to cover up some of the surfaces. Again, it's going to look tacky as all get out, but it's going to serve its purpose. So check out the show notes for links to everything that I mentioned in today's episode. I will see you back here next week, where we are going to talk about why you absolutely need to have an episode zero. No, of course explain what that is if you have no idea what that means. Thank you so much for tuning in. And I hope that you have a fantastic week. And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you're wondering if now is the right time to start a podcast for your coaching or consulting business, head on over to podcasting for coaches.com where you can either take a free quiz or schedule a one on one consultation with yours truly, thank you so much for joining me today and I will see you back here for the next episode.