Recording!
On this page, we walk you through how to get the best possible sound during your podcast recording and the ideal settings for your recording platform.
Getting The Best Sound
Here are four ways to get the best sound to help my team ensure your show makes for enjoyable listening.
1. Where possible please make sure you’re in a quiet environment. It’s super helpful if you can stay away from noisy fans, open windows, open-plan offices, etc. Please also make sure you have all your devices (tablet/cellphone…) off or, set to silent!
2. Rooms with soft furnishings are better than corridors or rooms with hard walls and floors where sound can bounce around. It avoids you sounding like you’re stuck in an echo chamber!
3. Please make sure you have a strong wifi signal where you are. Test everything before you start the official interview.
4. Please use headphones.
Preparing Your Guests
When you’re booking a remote guest interview you’ll also want to mitigate the risk of bad sound recording. The above tips are also good for them to know & follow.
In addition, if they don’t have a professional microphone, please let them know it’s better to use the built in microphone in their headphones, rather than using the built in microphone on their computer. If they don’t have any headphones, they should borrow some.
Once your guest has confirmed, you can use send them a message of what to expect to help get the best results. Feel free to use the template below, and edit as appropriate, to create your own standard guest email.
Another option you could consider is having a page on your website that details all this information that you link to/direct them to right after they book a time with you through your calendar scheduler. You can then link to it in any reminder or follow up messages.
Recording with Zoom
A reliable way of recording your podcasts on your own or with guests remotely is by using Zoom. It’s especially good to use for episode interviews, but can also be used for solo episodes.
There are a few tweaks you need to make in the settings to ensure the best results, which we walk through in the video below.
Check Your Zoom Settings
IMPORTANT!: Make sure you drag the entire folder into your ‘To Be Edited’ Dropbox folder. Your engineers will need all the assets that are recorded, just just the video.
Step by Step Instructions for Zoom settings:
Download the Zoom app to your computer
Open the app, and in the very top menu click on “zoom.us”
From the drop down, click on “Preferences”
This will bring up the preferences & settings menu
From the Audio Tab
Update the Speaker and Microphone dropdowns from the default built-in-option to your specific recording microphone name
From the Recording Tab
“Store your recordings” should be set to
Option 1: download onto your local desktop and after the file is created, drag the entire folder into your Dropbox To Be Edited folder
Option 2: set the location to download directly to your Dropbox To Be Edited folder. This allows you to skip the step of adding the folder to Dropbox manually (Note: this requires that you’ve downloaded dropbox as an app on your computer)
Check the first box that saying that you you want to choose the location
Check the box that says “record a separate audio file for each participant”
Check the box that says “optimize for 3rd party video editor”
Recording with Audacity
Solo episodes can be recorded using Zoom, but if you would like, you can use a different platform, we recommend Audacity. It can be downloaded for windows or mac.
Unlike Zoom or other platforms, it doesn’t require a stable internet connection to record so can be done at anytime.
How to use Audacity:
Check the settings before you record
Microphone - make sure the mic you are using is selected & connected
Mono recording is fine or once your gear is plugged in will ask you if you want to record in 2 channels or stereo - either is fine
Click the red button to start recording
Recordings are captured directly onto your computer
When you are finished recording - export the file as an mp3
Title the episode & save to your dropbox To Be Edited (TBE) folder
Or save it to your desktop and then load it to your TBE dropbox folder
Please get in touch on Slack if you…
Plan to record your podcast in the same location as your guests / co-hosts.
Plan to record while roaming
Wish to record using a different platform other than the ones mentioned above
Uploading Your Recordings to Dropbox
Please do not delete anything from Dropbox ever. Deleting files from your desktop, will delete the file for everyone, everywhere. If you are having hard drive space issues, please see further instructions below for different settings you can try.
After you are done recording your main segment and episode intro, ALL files should be loaded to the To Be Edited (TBE) folder in your dropbox. The easiest way to do this is to drag and drop the entire recording folder into To Be Edited folder.
You can do this a couple of ways.
1. Start with the recording file(s) on your desktop. Depending on your recording software & settings, it may have recorded to the cloud. You’ll need to download the files first.
2. If you are loading to the Desktop App, first be sure the app is open on your computer. Then drag & drop the files from your desktop to the dropbox app, into the To Be Edited folder. The app MUST BE open for syncing to the cloud to occur. If it doesn’t finish syncing then we are not able to see or access it on our end, despite it being loaded.
3. If you are loading to dropbox.com online, you can click on the blue “upload” button and manually select the files from your computer or you can drag & drop from your desktop into the TBE folder.
Sometimes, it will show that the file is finished loading, but you won’t see it in there. Typically just refreshing the page will update all the files and you can ensure the file was loaded fully.
Troubleshooting Dropbox Issues:
You loaded the files, but we do not see them on our end
Ensure that the file finished syncing on your end by opening the dropbox app and reviewing the files. The app has to be open and connected to internet in order for the files to sync to the cloud so we have access to them.
You get an error message that there isn’t enough storage space in your Dropbox account.
Then you may need to upgrade your Dropbox account to a paid subscription.
You are running out of room on your computer hard drive (if you’re using the Dropbox Desktop app). There are a couple of settings you can turn on to free up your drive.
Smart Sync - Smart Sync is a feature of the Dropbox desktop app that allows you to make files online-only so you can save hard drive space on your computer. You can choose which files to make online-only or let automatic Smart Sync choose for you.
Learn how to turn it on here: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/smart-sync
There was a previous issue with smart sync on Macs in that it was still taking up hard drive space, even though smart sync was on. With recent updates, they have created a new toggle button in your dropbox settings (online version) to fix this issue. If you have a Mac, Be sure that is toggled on.
From the online version, click on your name in the top right hand corner, then settings and scroll to the bottom of “General’ to toggle on the smart sync update for Mac.
To download files locally from the desktop app, right click on the file and select “local” under smart sync. It will then sync the file to your computer so you can work on it without internet. Note that depending on the size of the file, it may take a few minutes to download locally.
2. Selective Sync - Selective sync is a feature in the Dropbox desktop app that lets you choose folders to remove from your hard drive so you can save space on your computer. The folders you choose to remove from your hard drive remain stored in your account on dropbox.com.
Learn how to use selective sync here: https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync- uploads/selective-sync-overview
To Update Your Desktop App Settings:
Open your desktop app
In the top menu, go to Dropbox Preferences
Then click on “Sync”
Ensure your smart sync is toggled on
Under Selective Sync you can choose which folders (& subfolders) to keep on your desktop
As you mainly only ever need to load to TBE you can keep that folder in your selective sync and everything else just on the web. This function doesn’t delete anything, it simply removes it from living in your desktop app.
