We continue our exploration of the basics of sound recording with a journey through the mysterious and magical world of Post-Production. Mixing and beyond, a trio of expert practitioners take us through the art and science of making sound sound better.
Want to know more? Subscribe to this series (and leave a like and review) wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram, and feel free to reach out any time: pitcrew@citizenracecar.com
Thanks to our special guests in this episode, Alex Bouwer, Jose Miguel Baez, and Cheryl Otternritter of Ott House Audio.
Downloadable transcript here
(Opening Music)
David:
This is (A Podcast About) Making Better Podcasts. This is Episode Five, and it's called “Output”.
Last time, we talked about sound…
(Sound of crickets fade up in background)
…what sound actually is, physically, how it's captured in a recording, and some of the ways it can be changed and manipulated after you capture it. Today we're going to continue that and talk about another dimension of sound,…
(Soundscape: crickets continue, a car pulls up to an outdoor party)
…having multiple streams of sound, alternating them, layering them, in a way that makes them sound good together. This brings up the question of mixing, which pulls us ever deeper into the magical world of…
(Sparkle!)
Post-production.
(Music begins)
We talked a lot in the last episode of this show about controlling the experience of your listeners—making sure that they're hearing what you want them to hear, the way you want them to hear it. A large portion of that happens after the recordings are made. The truth of it is that even if you do everything right—a quiet room, good microphones set to the right levels, everyone speaking clearly, all of that—you can't just take that raw audio and throw it up on a feed and have it sound like a professional show. It has to be edited, it has to be mixed, and some consideration has to be given to sound design.
But what does all that actually mean? To have this conversation, I believe, once again we're going to need an audio engineer.
Alex:
What happens sometimes is people will turn their face away. They'll look to the side, they'll look up, they… the volume changes. Then you're like, “Oh wait, what did they say?”
David:
This is my colleague Alex Brower. He's Post-Production Lead here at CitizenRacecar.
Alex:
Or like, what if they, what if they fumble their words a little bit on an important part? You have to… someone has to turn that up to hear it. And hopefully it's not the listener that has to turn it up to hear it. I don't know if anyone's ever listened to a podcast and they're like, “wait, what did they say?” And you have to rewind it and listen again, crank the volume, rewind it, listen again. Hopefully that's the engineer doing that so that you don't have to.
(Music fades out)
I think of that as kind of my goal of, you know, you take raw audio where parts of it are really loud, parts of it are really quiet. And then it's kind of my job to make it still personable, but listenable and digestible and in a way that's not annoying.
David:
How do you go about mixing that? What's your process? How do you do it?
Alex:
Yeah! I love talking about this.
David:
I love that you love talking about this.
Alex:
This is not a question that I'm asked often. You're not normally at, like, a bar and someone's like, “How do you mix and master audio?” It's not…it doesn't come up very often, so this is very fun.
Uh, anyway…
(Soundscape in background: crowd at a busy restaurant)
…so the way I would start is, you want to think of podcasts as like a conversation, like a normal conversation in a normal room. And that's, what's the most helpful to listen to and the nicest way to listen to it. So I would go through all the different speakers first, like all the different people, and then I would make sure that they kind of sound similar. Usually there's a main speaker, whether it's the host or someone who's just talking the most.
(VO starts changing in quality, as he describes different tools)
And that's what I would start with is getting them… getting their audio to a good level. So that would be using tools like EQ and compression, which we can talk about more later, but sometimes also volume automation and cutting audio, cutting parts of it and then adjusting the volume manually. And then I start to go and I sync the other ones to that. So I take the other voice and I make the other voice match, similar. So that when you're listening to it then it flows nicely. So, it's balancing all of it out.
David:
Of course, this balancing is harder when some of those voices aren't recorded as well. Maybe the mics don't match, or maybe some of the people were in the studio and others called in on the phone.
(Sound of phone hanging up)
This makes things all the more tricky and challenging.
Alex:
So like, if you said someone's on the phone, well, that's extremely low quality audio, and there's only so much you can do to make it sound better. But there's different tools we have so that it doesn't sound like one person is next to you and another one's, like, talking underwater. (laughs) That's what we want to avoid.
Similar to how you would, if you're in a conversation with two people and one person's shouting and one person's whispering, that would be pretty strange.
(Music fades in)
David:
Another complication comes when we start getting creative with sound design. Adding music, for instance, or other kinds of sound effects. These are wonderful tools for creating interest and excitement, but they have to be mixed into the final piece in the right way.
(Music gets too loud)
Too loud, and these background elements dominate and make it hard to hear the dialogue.
(Music gets much quieter)
Too quiet, and they recede into the subliminal. Becoming either ineffective or annoying, or both.
(Music goes back to a middle volume)
Alex:
I take out parts of the frequencies of the music that are going to be interfering with the voices. So, the voice kind of takes up higher mid-range. So I would, I cut some of that in the music. And I also may do things to smooth the music out. I may do things to the music to make it sort of more flowy and less distracting
David:
Audio engineers have a whole suite of different tools they use to make these adjustments. Balancing things out and making sure they all sound good together. Many of these have to do with volume control.
(Soundscape: outdoor concert)
This all starts with an interface that looks like the kind of mixer you might find at a live performance: a box with a bunch of volume sliders, each one controlling a different microphone.
(Soundscape fades out)
Of course, when mixing a podcast, it's all done virtually inside a piece of software, but the principle is the same. The engineer can adjust the overall volume of different streams of sound, like the ones coming from each of the microphones.
(VO jumps around in the stereo field)
They can also automate these controls, program the volume of each of the streams, which are usually called “tracks”, to go up and down at different points.
(Music begins)
This is just the beginning. There are lots of interesting ways of manipulating volume. One of these is changing the volume not of the whole track, but of certain frequencies of sound within that track.
If you remember the last episode, we talked about how sound is a set of waves traveling through the air.
(Sounds of different waves begin)
These are real, physical waves, just like ocean waves traveling through water. And they're generated by something vibrating. And we talked about how it's very, very unusual for a vibrating object to generate just a single wave. It's almost always a whole bunch of different waves at the same time, moving at different frequencies. With a tool called EQ, an engineer can bring up or down the volume of different wave frequencies inside a complex sound.
Alex:
EQ is equalization, and it's a visual way to remove frequencies. So you can think of frequencies as…if you think of a square room…
(All but the low bass frequencies of the background music disappear)
…the very bottom, the floor of the room is the low frequencies. And that's like a sub bass, a kick drum, a boom noise, really low rumble subwoofer bass in your chest.
(Now we only hear the high treble frequencies)
And then the very top of the room, the ceiling, would be really shrill noises like, like a screech, something that would hurt your ears, it's like so high.
(Now we hear everything)
And so everything else in the middle is parts of the frequency spectrum. And so, with people's voices, everybody, depending on the day, depending on if they're sick, depending on the environment they're in, their voice sounds a little bit different. So we want the voice to sound good and not distracting. And so, you start to cut out these frequencies to get everything to sound normal. Like, that's the thing, is that we're trying to just get it to sound normal and slightly better than normal.
(Music fades out)
David:
There are also tools that work across the whole spectrum of sound waves to control volume. Probably the most popular and interesting of these is something called “compression”.
Alex:
So if you think of audio waves from a visual standpoint, it's kind of like peaks and valleys. I think everyone's kind of seen a waveform at some point where they see the squiggly lines. Parts of it go really up high and then really down low. And so what compression does is it pushes the peaks down. And so by doing that, it makes the valleys, the smaller parts, bigger, relatively.
David:
Used in a subtle way, compression can smooth out volume differences between different sources and different sections without having to go through and make dozens or hundreds of small volume adjustments manually. An experienced engineer will often achieve this by using multiple compressors on the same piece of audio.
Alex:
You would have each one just cut a little bit off, or turn down a little bit of the peaks. So let's say that, if you have an hour long episode, maybe there's a level 10 peak five times, so you have a compressor that turns that down. And then, so then your peak is maybe around 8.5, and you have maybe thirty 8.5 peaks, and so you have another compressor after that one that is just cutting the 8. 5 down to around a 7.5. And then, you know, maybe you have fifty times where it peaks around 6.5, and so then you cut that down a little bit. And so then they're all each doing just a little bit. And that way you're not, like, hearing it as much because it's, it's only doing tiny little bits here and there.
David:
Sometimes you do hear the compression, though. Used aggressively, compression is an effect. It can make things sound more present and exciting by smoothing out those peaks and valleys.
(Music and mix imitate radio broadcast)
Broadcast radio is famously very compressed, with the idea that it makes the sound pop out of the speakers.
(We compress further)
Or you can go further, and you can create a very particular brick wall kind of sound, where the foreground and the background are completely smoothed flat and all equally present.
(Sound returns to normal)
José:
This is a very, uh, polarizing tool, surprisingly.
David:
That's Jose Miguel Baez, another engineer who works with us here at CitizenRacecar. I hope you remember him from the last
José:
It's been a very polarizing tool, but the beauty of it is, because it has to do with loudness, it can serve multiple purposes.
David:
I’ve found something, that if you're mixing, so you're combining different sounds, you have multiple speakers, you have multiple streams of music, and you put a compressor over all of it, to me, it can have an effect where people… as different speakers come in and out, they're, sort of, taking the stage and then retreating into the background and the next person comes forward and it goes back again. There's like this… do you know what I'm talking about?
José:
Hmmm… interesting. What you're describing is, you're associating loudness with how close the person is.
David:
Right
José:
And yeah, that's a… that's a cool application.
David:
Yeah, there's something that happens too for me, though, I find there's like a pillowy effect. It makes it softer. Not softer like less volume, but it smooths over the rough edges, so, like, it gives it this sort of like… fluffy kind of sound to me. Like, you don't get those spikes.
José:
That has to do with how transient sound—so a very spiky sound, like a clap or like a plosive— that's going to go through the compressor really quickly and it's going to be turned down. And so now those natural sounding transient sounds are going to sound more in line with other sounds that are not that. And it gives you that, as you said, that pillow, less spiky, rounder kind of tone that you were describing. In some senses, it can even kill the recording, like the life of a recording. And it's a lot of times been described like that, as compressors suck the life out of the recording. And that would be one of the many reasons why.
David:
Well, a pillow, right? Like…
José:
Right
David:
…it can be nice to lay on, but can also, you know, like you put it over your face…
José:
(Laughs)
David:
…bad news.
José:
No, it can definitely be used as an effect. And there are many different recordings that, for sure, you have very unique sounds because of compression overuse. Or, I mean, I guess it's not overuse if it's intentional, right?
David:
I feel like a lot of these, like, ways of manipulating the sound, I think of it like cooking. And I think of these like seasonings.
José:
Yeah
David:
Like anything, you know, you really need a little bit of salt in almost everything you cook…
José:
Hmm-mmm
David:
…or it's going to be bland, but if you just eat a lump of salt, it's terrible.
José:
It's absolutely, yeah, horrible.
David:
You, just, but a little bit is necessary. Like, you don't want to just eat a sprig of rosemary, but a little bit in something can be just magic and make it come to life,
José:
Right. And sometimes you don't want a balanced kind of plate. Sometimes you want a very spicy plate. And so you use…
David:
Right
José:
…yeah, it really depends on what you're cooking. I like that analogy.
(Music begins)
David:
The cooking analogy continues when we think of how technology has developed and progressed, and changed what kinds of manipulation are possible.
(Soundscape: sounds of cooking technology)
200 years ago, cooking tech was basically fire and knives. Now we have microwave ovens, and refrigerators, and food processors, and toaster ovens, and immersion circulators, and meal prep delivery services. Like everywhere, the technology of audio engineering is developing really fast, and what's possible in post production has grown exponentially.
(Music fades out)
A hundred years ago, there was really no such thing as post production. In a recording studio, or for a radio broadcast, there would be one microphone, and what went into that microphone was cut directly onto a record, or sent directly over the airwaves.
Archival Recording Announcer:
“I’m Following In Father’s Footsteps”, sung by Miss Vesta Tilly, Edison Records
(Archival Music Begins)
Miss Vesta Tilly:
To follow in your father’s footsteps is a motto…
(Continues in background)
David:
This made it essential for performers to be excellent—pitch perfect, one take…
(Music fades out)
…and forced them to mix the sound between performers just by positioning themselves closer to that mic or farther away. Then mixers were invented. And you could use multiple microphones. But the sound still went out just like it came in. So the art became about things like microphone placement within a room.
Then magnetic tape was developed…
(Soundscape: tape machine sounds)
…which made real post production possible, but it was still a pretty crude affair. It involved things like cutting footage with a razor blade and then taping it back together again, and sending sound back and forth between two tape decks, with electromechanical equalizers and compressors placed in the middle.
(Tape sounds fade out, music begins)
Now, of course, it's all digital, and the sky is the limit. You can mix and remix over and over again, add a nearly endless number of digital effects, and edit to the level of manipulating individual peaks and valleys of a single sound wave.
Alex:
It used to be that, like, physically you would have to cut tape, like physical tape, to make an edit. And now we can just click and draw a line and then it does it for us. And it used to be that you would have to go in and add silence to remove the sound of an airplane or something like that. And now you can just look at the audio visually and draw a line around where the airplane noise is.
I feel like we've hit a point already where edited audio can sound better than the real thing, where someone's voice can sound more pleasing to the ear than their real voice, or it may sound cooler or more interesting. And so I think it's only going to get more like that. All the audio is going to get better and better and better. And what's going to happen is, in 10 years we're going to listen to audio that we have now and think it sounds bad.
David:
And in just the last few years, there are new developments that seem to be taking things even further. There are two I particularly want to mention.
(Music fades out)
The first, of course, has to do with everyone's favorite technological panacea, artificial intelligence.
Alex:
Well, it's interesting in this field, we've had AI tools for quite a few years already. They've just gotten better and they continue to get better.
(Music starts)
David:
AI is actually not very good at mixing or sound design quite yet, at least not nearly as good as a trained human engineer, but these next-gen AI-based tools are amazingly good at doing things like improving the sound quality of things that were originally recorded poorly.
So I think, I think you have, like, a piece of archival footage queued up, huh? Can we just listen to it raw, naked, without any manipulation at all?
José:
Totally
Archival Recording:
Most of the sound factors are already known: the speed of the tape in recording, its playing time, and the sound level required.
David:
Okay, so that's obviously an old recording that someone digitized. Is there anything you could do to make that sound better? To make it sound like it was recorded in a cleaner way?
José:
Well, right now it's, um, what most people would say is machine learning. There's a fancier word for that thrown around these days, but basically…
David:
The word is “AI”, isn't it?
José:
The word is totally AI. Um, basically it analyzes the frequency response of whatever audio is going through it. And it learns, based on other audio that is cleanly recorded, what is missing. It can tell what is missing from the audio.
David:
So will it actually it'll actually create new sounds?
José:
Yes, it's, uh, for example, in this particular piece of audio, I realized the low end was very hectic. There's a lot of energy down there, there's a lot of movement, there's a lot of hum. The mid-range as well, there's, like, a lot of crackle. And then on the high end, on the very, very high end, there's nothing. And so what I expected to do with this tool was to obviously clean up the lows and the mids. In order for it to do that, it has to identify what is speech and what is noise. And then on the high end, I'm expecting it to figure out what it's missing and create new high end that didn't previously exist.
David:
Okay, so can I… let's, let’s sick your robot on this piece of sound and see what it does.
José:
(Laughs) So maybe before and after?
David:
Yeah, let's do before and after. That's great.
Archival Recording:
(Original sound quality)
Most of the sound factors are already known. The speed of the tape and recording, it's playing time…
José:
and after
Archival Recording:
(Sound quality much improved)
Most of the sound factors are already known. The speed of the tape in recording, it's playing time…
David:
Wow
José:
Not perfect.
David:
Not perfect, but pretty… interesting. It still has a… it's not as clear sounding as us, our speech right now, which is just, you know, into a modern 21st Century microphone being digitally recorded, you know, at a very high level, but it's a lot better than it was. That's interesting.
José:
Definitely!
David:
So how much of this is this doing automatically, and how much are you guiding the software and telling it what you want?
José:
It depends on how well it does its job. (Laughs) Sometimes it really does something magical, that you're like, “wow, what a great tool.” Sometimes it's a little heavy handed because, after all, it's creating sound that is new. So I have to adjust how much of that new sound I'm willing to accept. What I would do is reach a compromise. Maybe I don't have that, quote unquote, “clean” sound if I reduce how much of the audio restoration effect goes into it, but I'll regain the natural quality. And so there is a… there's a game, there's a game of balance.
David:
Yeah. You know, this is something you and I and Alex often talk about is how much background noise to remove, for instance, from something. Because, to my ear, if you don't take out enough, the sound is poor; it's hard to listen to. But if you take out too much, you lose the quality of a human being in a room speaking…
José:
Right
David:
…which, which loses some of the intimacy and, sort of, um… attraction of listening. There's a real… there's a dance there
José:
And, and I think that's where you still need a human operator. It's hard to tell when too much is too much, that aspect of balance and compromise, I think it's something that maybe can't be quite coded.
David:
And it's subjective, right? I mean, I could hear something and think it sounds perfect, and you could think, “ah, no, I keep wanting to tweak that”, or vice versa. So…
José:
Right
David:
…there's something to that too. There's… you can have a style as an engineer, or a certain sound, like a different… the way you might EQ something or cut something, the way Alex might do it, the way I might do it, it might sound three totally different ways.
José:
Totally
Alex:
I think there's always going to be somebody who's running the audio through the AI and telling the AI different things, different creative inputs. You say, like, “hey, remove this”. And then maybe it removes it too much, where it sounds unnatural. So then you say, “okay, turn it down to fifty percent” or “okay, let's try this model instead”. So there's… there's a lot of fussing with it still.
David:
Well, and AI can't really ever figure out what's good, can it? Like, it doesn’t know…
José:
Right. It can say, this sounds… this sounds better. And so, like, the AI… like you could just record and upload a podcast to an AI and it'll sound better. But, is it going to be more improved if somebody who knows what they're doing messes with the settings? I think it always will be.
(Music enters)
David:
One more new development in post production that I want to talk about is what is sometimes called “spatial audio”. The versions of this that have started to pop up in podcasting are called things like “binaural sound” or “3D sound”. These are totally different ways of thinking about mixing. And they came out of the idea of Surround Sound, which was originally developed for movie theaters. The very first Surround Sound systems were actually built by Walt Disney almost a hundred years ago.
Cheryl:
Really, a lot of people don't realize that, what was it—Fantasia. That was the very first piece of Surround, and they built this apparatus to go around the country to actually listen to surround immersive quality, uh, there…
David:
Was that the 40s?
Cheryl:
30s, I believe.
David:
Wow.
That's my friend Cheryl Ottenritter, who runs a studio called Ott House in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC. She's one of a small number of audio engineers around the country who specialize in mixing in a very sophisticated version of spatial audio called “Dolby Atmos”.
Cheryl:
I think the big thing about immersive mixing, comparatively to traditional channel based mixing, that you really should get across is that it… you kind of have to think about it differently.
David:
This is because most audio engineers, when they're mixing something, are thinking about two output channels: left and right. This makes sense to us, as people. We have a fundamentally two channel experience when we listen to anything because we have two ears, one on each side.
So an engineer, when they're outputting a final mix, generally has two choices: they can do what's called a “Mono”, short for “Monaural”, mix, where exactly the same thing is coming out of both speakers; or a “Stereophonic”, AKA “Stereo” mix, where different combinations of things are sent to the left speaker than are sent to the right speaker.
This makes use of an effect called panning, and this creates an illusion of space in our minds.
(Voiceover moves to the left)
You can throw things all the way to the left…
(Voiceover moves to the right)
…or all the way to the right…
(Voiceover moves around the stereo field as described)
…or have the effect of being “in the center” by going equally to both sides. This is a spectrum, and things can be placed less to one side by being played mostly from one speaker but a little bit from the other…
(Music stops)
…or you can create motion effects by automating that panning. Fun stuff. Anyway…
(Music starts again)
…with these spatial audio theater systems, there are lots of speakers placed all around the room: on both sides, in the front, in the back, in the ceiling, in the floor. Atmos, for instance, uses a hundred and twenty-eight channels of output, rather than two.
(Music fades out)
What mix engineers figured out as these systems were developed is that it was better to mix for these kinds of systems by visualizing the space rather than thinking about what goes to which speaker.
Cheryl:
Dolby Atmos, and other more object based mixing, is based on objects where they're placed in the sound field. Think about it being placed in the sound field, not just in a channel.
David:
Oh, wow. So you're actually thinking about… on your computer screen, you're picturing a room…
Cheryl:
Yeah!
David:
…and you're placing things in the room.
At this point, she pulled up a mix on her computer screen.
Cheryl:
So, let me bring it out to…
David:
Oh, wow
Cheryl:
…7.1
(Indistinct soundscape in distant background)
So these are objects right there.
David:
Wow, and as it's playing, I'm actually seeing where you're sending the sound from, and
It's not just coming from the speakers, it's… you're sending it across the room.
Cheryl:
Right
David:
Like, the different sound sources look like little, little green and yellow balls…
Cheryl:
Right, exactly.
David:
…on the thing, and you’re sort of throwing them around the room. Wow.
Cheryl:
And that's the difference. It allows you to hear sounds more around you than just left and right.
David:
You know what, I wonder… I've often noticed how great music sometimes sounds in a movie.
Cheryl:
Mm-hmm
David:
Like on a film score, like, you hear the same classic rock song you've heard on the radio, but it sounds incredible in the movie theater. And I wonder if that's part of the reason, is, uh, that surround…
Cheryl:
The space
David:
…the surround sound experience.
Cheryl:
It could be, very much so. Yeah, absolutely. Cause you spatially, you move things around and you can do… you can do so much. Like, “okay, so I'm going to spread out the drums, like, like a real drum set, maybe in the corner, or I'm going to do different things”. So, it gives you lots of options.
David:
Of course, most of us don't have Dolby Atmos systems with 128 different speakers in our living rooms, even less so in our headphones. There's only two speakers there, and there's really nothing you can do about that.
Or is there? There's a mixing system called “Binaural Sound”, which is said to simulate this immersive experience on headphones.
Cheryl:
Binaural really was developed in the seventies, where it's based on, like, how you perceive sound and your facial construction and your ears. Binaural can actually feel the space above your head. So it goes all the way around. Binaural can… you can feel it in the 360, versus… and it does it by psychoacoustics with your face. That's the best way I can describe it. Binaural is really heard best on, and really only on, headphones, because it's concentrating just on like what your ear is hearing there and how it's around your face, so it doesn't really come across very well on speakers, et cetera.
David:
Um, well, maybe show me an example. Can you show me the difference between Stereo and…
Cheryl:
Yeah!
David:
…Binaural?
Cheryl:
Yeah!
David:
Let's do it.
Cheryl:
Yeah, so we built this 90-second little sound design clip based on the name of your company, Racecar. I thought it'd be fun. So, we created this racecar adventure here and we mixed it in Dolby Atmos. And what we're doing is we're sending out both the binaural feed, which you hear on headphones and a stereo feed, which obviously you can hear on headphones or speakers.
David:
Cool!
Cheryl:
So let's do stereo first.
(Racecar adventure begins in Stereo)
Woman singing:
…and the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
Racetrack announcer:
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. The show is about to begin.
(Racecar adventure concludes)
David:
Beautiful. So, it's really thick. There's lots going on in there.
Cheryl:
Yeah, that is fun
David:
I mean, that was rich. It was a really, um… immersive, to use and over-...
Cheryl:
Yeah
David:
…-used phrase experience. I was there, I felt like I was there at the racetrack. So, but that was just plain Stereo. So now let's hear, for contrast, let's hear this, this other layer.
Cheryl:
The Binaural. All right, now here, I'm hoping, is Binaural.
(Racecar adventure begins in Binaural)
Woman singing:
…and the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
Racetrack announcer:
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. The show is about to begin.
(Racecar adventure concludes)
David:
And so there’s just different, it’s sort of different ways of compressing that immersive experience into a left/right headphones experience.
Cheryl:
Correct
David:
But it really is… but isn't it still just a manipulation of those things we said at the beginning? Isn't this all still just manipulations of volume and panning, in more sophisticated ways of manipulating them?
Cheryl:
Ah, absolutely! Yeah, everything comes down to that. Volume and pan. That’s, you know...
Meaning, uh, level… basic level, both, you know, level and volume of the clip, uh, volume automation, as well as, like, you know, EQ is manipulation of volume over frequencies, basically. You know, and compression, that's really what it controls, is volume. That's a very oversimplified view of compression, but that's…. that's what you're doing is you're manipulating volume. So, you know, mixing really comes down to volume and spatial orientation.
David:
You know, I'm so glad you said that because it confirms that I'm not crazy.
Cheryl:
No! No, you're not crazy. Mixing is, really just comes down to volume and pan, trying to create that sound…
David:
Well, it’s the difference between a chisel and, like, a, you know, computer-operated routing table. It’s just cutting wood.
Cheryl:
Yeah
David:
It’s just a blade cutting wood.
Cheryl:
Right
David:
But it’s a question of how subtly you’re able to control that blade.
Cheryl:
Yeah, that’s one… that is how you can look at it.
(Music starts)
David:
How can you tell when you have the right mix?
Alex:
Honestly, it just sounds good. That's the bottom line is like, does it sound good? Are there distractions? Like, if there's a distraction in the audio, then it's not done. It's not a good mix.
David:
Yeah, you don't want to be pulled out of the story by a sound issue.
Alex:
Yeah. I'd say that's the number one thing, but then going deeper in is, like, making it pleasing on the ears, making it so that you could turn it up loud and it wouldn't sound wrong. And one of the best ways to do that is to check your work on a bunch of different speakers and headphones, just to understand how it sounds because some people are going to listen on a Sonos speaker. Some people are going to listen on iPhone speakers and everything in between. So, you kind of have to find a middle ground where it sounds pretty good on everything and just, no distractions. That's like the main thing is, like, if something is annoying, then like, what's the point of listening to it?
David:
Uh, I knew somebody at Berklee who said once that, um—and I just, I've always thought about this. I always love this—it's a good mix if you want to turn it up and it's a bad mix if you want to turn it down.
Cheryl:
(Laughs) Yeah? Yeah, I can… I can agree. I can agree with that.
David:
Why is all of this careful thinking about post production necessary? So I imagine someone listening to this who's, you know, an amateur podcaster is like, “well..why go to this step at all? Why not just record something and throw it out there?”
Cheryl:
Well, I mean, a quick preview of what's out there will tell you why and why not to do that. And I would say anything to make your podcast stand out in the sea of podcasts is what you should be doing.
You know, and, and that's my argument for people who are like, “well, it's just voice. Why do I need to do Immersive mixing”
(Music fades in)
Well, okay. If it's seriously just voice, then okay. Maybe, maybe not just do a really, really good job recording it and mixing it and making it sound the best you can. Absolutely. But, wouldn't it be kind of cool to bring it closer to the listener if it's an intimate conversation?
David:
Yeah
Cheryl:
I mean, even it's just like a nanobit, intimate, closer, I don't know.
David:
Yeah
Cheryl:
I mean, there's going to be the believers and disbelievers no matter what you do. It's an audio art form, so I guess what I'm saying is no matter which side you fall on, just do the best sound you absolutely can. And if being immersive speaks to you, then do that. If not, just focus on your story, focus on your sound. Just create the best sound you can.
David:
This is (A Podcast About) Making Better Podcasts
My name is David Hoffman, and I wrote and produced this show
My guests today were Alex Brower, José Miguel Baez, and Cheryl Ottenritter
Alex and I collaborated on the Post-Production
Cheryl and her team at Ott House created those cool racecar soundscapes
Candice Chantalou handles publication and promotion.
This is a production of CitizenRacecar, citizenracecar.com