Dynamic Levels
Listen to the dynamic levels in Michael’s song:
You hear how the volume and depth of the music rises and falls?
It helps his music seem deeper and richer. The dynamics lead to the emotional rapture of the song. It’s an important part of MJ’s success.
Dynamic Levels Don’t Work For Podcasting
Dynamic podcast levels are a pain for podcast listeners. With podcasts, the rapture is in the voice and the word selection.
If we try to add dynamic levels, we forget about the listener.
People listen to podcasts while they run or while they drive. Often, they are listening with headphones to drown out all the mad noise surrounding them.
If someone is listening to your podcast and the levels are low, they turn the volume up. A few moments later, the next voice jumps in at normal levels. Because the volume is way up, the normal level is a blast to the eardrums.
That sucks.
Also, low levels make it impossible to hear the podcast at times. If I’m running and listening to a podcast, I can’t have a show playing that I can’t hear.
Perhaps years of electric guitar and rifle shooting has caused me to be overly sensitive to this… but ear health is another blog post all together.
If the levels are so low that I’m having trouble hearing the show, I turn it off, delete the episode and unsubscribe to a show.
Not Good.
How Do I Make a Level Podcast?
To solve this use Levelator (http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/levelator).
Just drop your podcast’s interview segment into the program as a .aiff or .wav file and use the output file to mix the podcast.
Creating a Great Podcast?
My podcast production course is here. You’ll find information on how to mix a levelated show, file organization, podcast website development and much more. It’s everything you need if you’re going at it alone, or with a kick ass team.
If you want to bring on an expert team, reach out to us here. If were a good fit, all you need to do is record and send the files. We can do it all for you.
