I was trying to think who I could ask for podcasting advice on something that I feel like LOADS of people must have run into, but I can’t find a direct answer to via googling or Chat GPT and then I remembered this community.
Basically, I switched recording my interview podcast, The Coach’s Journey, from Zoom to Riverside FM (aiming for better audio, fewer glitches on guests’ side).
We’re getting better audio, but I’m finding it’s adding loads of work in the editing phase - we’re getting echoes, crackles, hums, all sorts on the audio that we never got on Zoom. (I’m guessing Zoom was just editing it out automatically live to make it a smoother call).
Of course there are ways to fix some of the individual problems here, but I’m more interested in ‘is there a way to set Riverside up so it doesn’t create loads of extra work?’ Other people must have come across this same problem but I can’t find an answer to ‘What settings do I use on Riverside to make it as easy to edit as Zoom?’ If that’s even possible.
That may be too hard to answer, or the answer may just be ‘yeah, you get higher quality and that means more imperfections’, but honestly at the moment for the extra work for our editors I’m not sure it’s worth it to get a few less glitches on guest audio!
Would love any reflections anyone has on this - and of course if it’s somewhere else on the form, please do
@Robbie we have edited video and audio for over 900 shows and 50K episodes. We teach all our clients to record on Zoom for three reasons:
They already “smooth things out” as you noted.
The output from your hosting platform, like ours, Podetize, must convert and encode the file to match the industry standard bitrate and file size (typically below the recording levels and editing software output) so that your files don’t slow down streaming on the podcast player apps.
We have found that Riverside and many others are not as reliable and user friendly for guest interviews, especially if your guests are older or in corporate. It puts resistance and too much tech in the guest user experience. Of all the recording platforms our clients do use, we have had the most recording failures reported from Riverside. Zoom is by far the most reliable when the recording settings are correct.
If you decide to go back to Zoom, you may have to reach out to Zoom to get them to switch your recording settings to 1080i to get the best video quality possible and make sure that you have checked the box for selected separated audio tracks too.
I asked my tech team and they said there are no setting adjustments that they are aware of that removes those echoes, crackles and hums. But they did suggest that you try changing out your microphone to an ATR-style model (Audio-Technica) with a foam windscreen “sock” over it. The lower cost microphones are more directed and do a lot of smoothing out when the system os overly sensitive. Let me know if that works so I can add let my team know.
@Robbie ,
I’ve been using Riverside for a while and yes, I do find it more sensitive. Are you using a dynamic mic? That might also be picking up everything. I use a cardioid mic and find I don’t get the noises .
My guests are often using AirPods and they too are working on in terms of not being too sensitive
These are all really good reasons to consider going back to zoom.
One of the reasons I switched from zoom to riverside was that zoom would shorten my audio track if my guest was talking and I was silent for long periods. This meant spending a lot of time syncing tracks before I could edit.
I stopped using Riverside when Descript bought Squadcast as I already edit in Descript. The Descript tool ‘Studio Sound’ removes all those backgrounds noises - I actually reduce it to 75% so that it doesn’t sound over produced as it can seem a bit dull.
I haven’t recorded that way in a while though, so I’m sure all of the tools will have made improvements.
I haven’t tried Riverside, but you could run your edited audio through Auphonic.com for final mastering—great for removing noise, and they offer two free hours per month.
Adobe Podcasts offers an “Enhance Speech (Version 2)” feature for cleanup. However, their free plan has limitations, allowing recordings of only 30 minutes and 500MB, with a one-hour-per-day upload limit (I guess you can split longer recordings into chunks).
Zoom does still have the problem when you are saving locally to your computer, but not with the Cloud Recording version.
Here was my top editor’s advice (and he is a fan of using Riverside): “Her mic settings could be the issue. She might need to adjust her mic input levels. If they’re too high, the mic will be overly sensitive and pick up extra noise. I found a tutorial that might help.” https://riverside.fm/university-videos/7-microphone-tips-to-improve-audio-quality
