Podcast Audio

Signal chain & production notes

• Voiceover self-recorded (apologies, I'm not much of a news anchor) on a Shure SM7B in Adobe Audition.
• Cleaned up in iZotope RX with a combination of De-noise, De-mouth click, and De-plosive for a clean signal, plus De-Reverb to bring the audio to the front of the mix.
• Brought the cleaned audio into Ableton Live 12 and processed it with the following chain for consistency and clarity across listening devices:
  • Pro-Q3: initial EQ
  • Soothe2 & RX De-ess: for harsh sibilance; fairly significant processing because untamed sibilance is real trouble on mobile speakers
  • FabFilter Saturn: gentle overall saturation for warmth
  • Fresh Air: adds vocal air; the audio is much less dull with it
  • FabFilter Pro-C2: subtle compression; taming peaks without killing vocal dynamics
  • FabFilter Pro-L2: peak catch, LUFS monitoring; True Peak limit at −1 dB ceiling and −16 LUFS integrated, the standardized podcast target
• Added background music and designed SFX for transitions and points of interest.
• Captioned video assembled in Descript; full video edited in DaVinci Resolve.