Audio quality may be the key to a successful and a failed podcast that can be easily achieved with the many free and premium software out on the market today. Some are easy to use and some are a bit more complicated and with good reason for these types of audio editing tools are more for professional recording people or technicians who prefer high quality audio recordings. For us normal folks who simply want to create quality podcasts, you don’t need the most expensive gear to make a good podcast as we have shown again and again on this site. To get a successful podcast and make it better through editing, you should first set a level of quality you’d want to achieve. For beginners, a decent podcast should be brief and concise yet very entertaining to your target audience so to learn form the experts is the best key to pick-up some tips that would also allow you to learn the different styles that are used by more prominent professional podcasters in their shows.
Beginners are often faced with too much noise or too little volume of their voice as they learn the ropes of proper podcasting. one tool recommended by experts for beginners is the Levelator, a software that uses preset audio levels that just seems to make things sound pretty much better than with what you started with. It uses keen programming that automatically adjusts the audio levels to their proper levels, no fuss and no complicated monitoring required. Use cannot be simpler than with a drag and drop interface after which the magic begins and the audio you began with just sounds a whole lot better.
Another nifty tool for more advanced users is Izotope’s Ozone system that allows you to use DRM free sound effects that you apply live, no cuing not split-second selections, just plain live sound effects that you can play over and over. They also have advanced software that applies Dynamic Noise Removal for cleaning up your audio recordings, ridding you of the bumps on the road or the honking of the horns of the cars just around the corner from where you made your recording.
Podcasts should be fun and enjoyable for it to succeed and to ensure you hit it right, you should listen to your final product over and over, each time trimming it down and using more appropriate wording. This is to shorten the podcast which would be better to listen to than a long ramble that doesn’t end. It would also be an idea to observe the audio quality goals you set to the extent that a recording that sounds either too noisy or doesn’t have enough juice should be discarded and re-recorded for better quality. Remember, good recording requires less editing headaches as you finalize your work so just keep at it till you get it right.

Originally posted on February 16, 2011 @ 9:28 am