audacity.sourceforge.net – Podcastreporter.com

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In this episode of The Podcast Reporter, we reflect on a recent episode of the buzzsprout.com/blog that is titled: “How to use the compressor in Audacity.”

Now, for some of the newer or aspiring podcasters, this is quite a brief lesson in what compression is, and how it is done with Audacity — and some suggested settings for better audio with that program.

The author of this blog post delivers this as a tutorial (and at the end of the post, there is a list of links with more audio tutorials, for your benefit).

This post has quite a few details, and it is a good reference for those podcasters that want to know about the compressor in Audacity.

Some of those sections covered are:

What is compression and how to apply it (a 6:00 minute video);
When should you use audio compression?
Applying the Audacity compressor effect;
- the graph
- the settings
- the threshold
- the noise floor
- the ratio
- the attack time and release time; and
- make-up gain;
- compression based on peaks; and
- limiter effect.
Avoiding over-compressing; and finally,
Previewing the compressor settings for audio.

Now, a lot of podcasters may feel that they do not need to deal with compressor settings, but this brief tutorial is great for a general understanding of some elements that can help your audio episodes become better quality. And you don’t have to be a genius or tech whiz to understand them. This tutorial in buzzsprout.com/blog does give VALUE in an understanding of better audio quality possibilities with Audacity.

We hope that you go through the tutorial and video, so that you can understand better the compressor in Audacity, and then you can decide for yourself if you want to use that effect for improving your audio episode quality.

Thank you for your attention.

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In this episode of the Podcast Reporter, we discuss a post from the recent buzzsrpout.com blog that delivers suggestions, tips and also screen capture images on how to reduce noise using the Audacity application. This is mainly done using the Noise Removal feature in the program — and this article probably has value for new and aspiring podcasters (as the older veterans of podcasting have already used this feature and have either standardized on it or have chosen other means to include in their workflow).

Now, for this podcaster, I was first alerted to this feature of Audacity in 2005-2006 by Paul Colligan in his earlier podcast show, Podcast Tools (now podfaded). And I have used this feature for reducing the noise level in my episodes — as it seems good enough for me. And even with the help of tutorials from Steve Stewart about Audacity, the removal or diminishing of noise can be done even better, the neophyte podcaster can find value in reducing the amount of noise in the raw capture of a wav file before exporting it to mp3 format for the final episode. In fact, I myself found great value in the tutorial by Steve to sharpen the skills delivered to me over the internet from someone who is a professional audio editor.

Now, this recent blog post in buzzsprout.com/blog gives a summary of the tips for removing background noise in your recording, along with a 4 minute-20-second video:

First, the items covered are the standard “preventions” in creating unnecessary background noise;
- optimize your recording space;
- turn down the gain on your mic;
- use a dynamic mic;
- minimize computer fan noise.
Then once the “preventative” measures are taken, then the three steps are promoted to remove the noise in the Audacity feature called “Noise Removal”:
- Get a noise sample
- Apply noise reduction; and
- Tweak the settings by adjusting certain levels; then
- Use the PREVIEW button to test the noise quality resulting from the tweaks.
You are also given some further thoughts and resources to give you more information and suggestions about noise quality and improvement of your audio.

We hope that these suggestions can be of value to the new and aspiring podcaster, so that the quality of the audio can be greatly improved — thus allowing your listeners to enjoy a good level of sound as they listen to your message and hear the VALUE of your episode and message of your podcast show.

Thank you for your attention.