238: How To Handle Loudness Properly in All Stages of Your Podcast Production Workflow

The Podcast Engineering Show

NOTE: In this episode I’m using a Sennheiser e835 microphone into my Portico 2 channel strip and using these plugins in post: KIT BB N105, Shadow Hills Class A Mastering Compressor, Saturn 2, and Aquamarine 4.

Here's the summary of what I discuss on How To Handle Loudness Properly in All Stages of Your Podcast Production Workflow:

• Record all raw tracks at a healthy level (not too low or too hot)
• Set all raw tracks to the same LUFS before bringing them into your DAW. (I do this at the end of my cleanup phase after I remove background noise, plosives, hums, and other blemishes)
• Use Compression and/or MaxxVolume/Vocal Rider to compress/tame the loud parts as well as boost the lower volume parts. (NOTE: This step will effectively amplify any background noise, so be sure to absolutely minimize the background noise before pressing record!)
• Adjust the overall level of each participant so they all sound good compared to each other. (as part of your mixing phase, where you can also use other processing like EQ, saturation, etc.)
• After rendering the final episode audio, process this file so it adheres to the “unofficial” loudness standards of podcasting: -19 LUFS for mono episodes, or -16 LUFS for stereo episodes.

Other Notes:

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Let me know if you have any questions or need any help with anything, ~Chris