Recording a podcast is a breeze using the built-in tools that come with every new Mac, and the whole process of editing and exporting takes just a few minutes for a simple audio podcast. This tutorial explores some of the easiest ways to create one. GarageBand is an Apple-exclusive program that gives you a full audio creation suite with features for audio recording, virtual instruments, MIDI-editing, and even music lessons built right in.
Once you’ve captured the audio, it’s time to splice it all together and trim it down. Depending on the kind of podcast, you may also need to incorporate other audio—music, ambient sound, and other effects. Once again, here’s how four podcasting vets—Christopher Breen (the Macworld Podcast); Editorial Director Jason Snell (The Incomparable); Erika Ensign (Verity!); and Chip Sudderth (The Two-Minute Time Lord)—get that done. (Warning: Ensign is a Windows user. But we still thought her overall workflow would be instructive for all podcasters, regardless of their preferred platform.)
Christopher Breen
Chris originally did his editing in GarageBand, because he wanted to make enhanced podcasts—AAC files with embedded chapters, links, and images—which GarageBand supports. But he found editing in that app tedious. Among other things, it lacks a ripple-delete function, which automatically moves the audio following a section you’re cutting to the point where you made the cut. Also, he found GarageBand’s audio effects and noise-removal tool too limited, and there’s no built-in way to remove plosives.
So now he uses Adobe Audition. He likes it because “it feels like a real audio editor, something designed for radio and film use.” If he has a problem with something, he has faith that Audition has a solution. The only thing he doesn’t like about Audition: Adobe’s subscription model. Once his current trial sub expires, he’s going to look for another tool, because “it’s not worth paying Adobe’s Creative Cloud price for this single application.”
Once he’s gathered together the various tracks, he pulls them into Audition and lines them up so they’re in sync. He checks the waveform for each track to get an idea of its general loudness. He prefers to adjust the overall volume of a track before applying any effects. He uses Audition’s multiband compressor to give speakers more of an 'FM Radio sound' and to punch up their volume. If someone’s too loud, he uses a limiter. He occasionally fiddles around with a downward expander effect to hide little noises that fall below a certain threshold (“if someone is a lip smacker or heavy breather”). For plosives, he uses Audition’s Kill the Mic Rumble preset (in the FFT Filter); “it’s a miracle worker.”
After making repairs and cuts where necessary, he exports the results as a mono AIFF track, which he then imports into GarageBand 6. There, he inserts opening and closing remarks and any ads he might have. He moves the elements into place, adds opening and closing theme music, and draws in fades (fading the music out as a voice comes in, for example). Then he adds the enhancements: adding chapters and graphics, applying URLs to chapters, adding a description, and mucking with the metadata that will appear in iTunes. Finally, he exports it as a mono spoken podcast to iTunes.
Free Podcast Recording SoftwareErika Ensign
Erika is a PC person and a one-time student of radio, TV, and film production, so she uses a program called Sony Movie Studio Platinum to do her podcast editing. (“I like the layout and the easy shortcuts and controls.”) She simply removes the video tracks and works with the audio. She tried Audacity, but didn’t like it. “It gets the job done, but I think it’s ugly and unintuitive.”
The show does have a theme song (a version of the Doctor Who theme as performed by the English band Traffic Experiment. She asked their permission to use it, which they kindly granted. “It’s perfect for us, as it features female vocals.”
She adds sound effects occasionally. (For example, when someone accidentally swears, she replaces it with the sound of the Doctor Who’s sonic screwdriver). When transitioning from one segment to another, she use a the sound of a Vardan gun from the show.
She has a template saved in Movie Studio Platinum with tracks for music, sound effects, and separate audio files. The music track has the opening theme in roughly the spot it should be. The tracks for the separate audio files already have compression applied and the EQ tweaked for that particular participant’s voice. She opens the template, saves it as the new episode, and deletes the tracks for the contributors who don’t appear on that episode.
When she receives the MP3 files from that week’s guests, she inserts them in the appropriate tracks, lines them up, trims off the extra chatter at the beginning and end, and adds the closing theme music. She also uses noise gates for any files that have distracting ambient noise. If there was a problem with Skype during the call, she’ll edit out any downtime in the middle. She’ll also check her notes to see if there were any offending background sounds that need attention.
She then renders the project as an MP3 at 96kbps.
Jason Snell
Like Chris Breen, Jason used to use GarageBand. But over time, he realized that it made it harder to edit podcasts quickly. (Since he does his podcast in his spare time, speed is of the essence.)
So he switched to Logic Pro X. It’s a sophisticated audio editing app for music pros; in some ways, it’s overkill for podcast editing. But “I’m two to three-times faster with the podcast than I was with GarageBand, so it was worth it.”
His workflow goes like this: First, everybody sends him their files. (Most people just use Dropbox: He has a shared folder there that panelists can join.) He uses the conversion tools that come with Call Recorder to convert all files to an uncompressed audio file (AIFF). He then brings each individual file into Logic as its own track. He also imports the Call Recorder recording, which contains everyone else’s voices as he heard them on Skype; he uses that track to sync up the conversation, so everybody’s separately recorded tracks line up in the proper time. Once that’s done, he deletes the Skype track from Logic.
Once everything is in Logic, he uses the Strip Silence command to delete all portions of everyone’s audio track where there’s nothing making noise. This has the effect of leaving behind only the parts of their track when people are speaking, making it easy to edit the podcast visually.
His goal is not to take out every “Um” or “Uh,” but to look for places where people are talking over each other—”deadly when you’re doing a panel-based podcast.” Just by looking at Logic, he can see when more than one person is speaking, then jump to those spots and either delete the interruptions and false starts or slide them apart from one another, “so it sounds as if we are all very polite people who never speak until somebody else has stopped speaking.”
His goal is not to take out every “Um” or “Uh,” but to look for places where people are talking over each other
He works through the podcast from start to finish, often not even listening to long monologues unless he sees a pause or something else that needs to be edited. He also remembers things that happened during recording that need to be fixed (such as somebody swearing or digressing). If the podcast has advertising, he records them separately and drops them in. The only sound-effect he uses is something he calls the “Spoiler Horn”, to warn people when there’s discussions of something spoiler-y; it’s actually a stock Apple sound-effect called Ferry Fog Horn.
Once he’s done with all that, he export the results to AIFF format, converts that to MP3 using iTunes, and uploads it to the website that hosts his podcast.
Chip Sudderth
Chip spent money on microphones, but not on editing software. He records and edits voice tracks with Audacity. (“It gives me a level of quality control I never felt I had when I started out in GarageBand.”) Once the voice tracks are done, he imports them into GarageBand for music, transitions and other effects. (“GarageBand remains far more intuitive for big-picture work.”)
In the interest of saving some time, he usually runs all of the audio tracks through The Conversation Network’s Levelator (which is no longer being actively supported) rather than manually compressing them. “I consider Levelator essential for interviews and roundtables. On the other hand, if you begin with poor-quality audio, Levelator exacts a terrible price.”
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Updated with new models released January, 2019.
So you want to get serious about music production or podcasting? You’ll need a good laptop that can handle everything you throw at it.
There is a good chance you’ll have lots of programs and tabs open at the same time and you will need the ability to add at least 1 extra screen (many people use 2 or 3). These usage requirements use a lot of RAM and graphic power, respectively. I recommend getting at least 16GB RAM if at all possible.
Most important for audio processing is a CPU with fast single core performance. This will allow you to get your mixes into a single file much quicker and process effects and chains without the CPU needing to wait, among many other benefits. 8th generation Intel i7 processors are the best, followed by Intel i5. 7th generation processors are also excellent.
We’re just going to focus on the best laptops for music production and podcasting. There are many more options for desktop and all-in-one computers that work well for audio recording and podcast recording, but the flexibility and portability of a laptop makes it a must-have.
Best Podcast Recording Software For Mac
The other big thing to consider is Apple vs Windows (Mac vs PC). This choice usually comes down to what recording software (DAW) you are going to use and what you are used to using. Personally, I’m an Apple fan, but I started with Windows – and I use both of them daily. The Mac operating system is usually more stable, which can be critical when recording, although there are tons of big-name producers who swear by both systems.
If you want to use Logic Pro, it’s made by Apple and only works their computers. If you want to use GarageBand (a great choice for podcast production), it’s included free with Apple computers. Avid Pro Tools is another very popular industry-leading software that works on both systems.
Many of these popular tools have minimum requirements and recommended requirements. Performance will be much better if you get a laptop with at least the recommended requirements so I’m just going to recommend music production laptops that meet or exceed the recommended specs.
You usually will have a much longer lifespan if you get a computer toward the higher end of the spec list because it won’t be outdated as quickly, which means over time it will actually cost you less. Just something to consider.
Let’s start my favorite laptop from Apple:
Quick Overview: Best Laptop for Music Production
Contents
Best Music Production LaptopsApple MacBook Pro
There’s a 13″ and a 15″ model (well, 13.3″ and 15.4″ to be exact) of the MacBook Pro laptop.
If you’re working on a plane a lot the 13-inch option is perfect, but that’s not most people. I would recommend getting the latest 15″ MacBook Pro with Touchbar.
With up to 32GB of RAM, a 2.6GHz 6-core Intel i7 processor (Coffee Lake) and a 256GB (or 512GB) solid-state hard drive you’ll be set for years. As of early-2019, this is the best MacBook Pro for music production. I would stick with the 256GB SSD and expand with an external SSD later as needed unless you know you’ll need the extra space. It also comes with a Radeon Pro 560x with 4GB video RAM.
It comes with 4 USB-C ports so you will need to get adapters or a dock. USB Type-C is a different port from traditional USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports.
Stay away from regular Macbooks (the non “Pro” models). They basically use a similar processor to a phone, meaning they’re designed for battery life over speed.
Razer Blade
Yes, the Razer Blade is a “gaming” laptop, but that also means it’s equally well-equipped to effortlessly handle music production.
The model I recommend is the advanced 15″ Razer Blade. It has an Intel i7-8750H 6-Core CPU, NVIDIA RTX 2060 (6GB GDDR5 VRAM), 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD.
They also have an ultrathin 13″ laptop and a 17″ desktop replacement, but as of March 2019, the 15″ model is the most recently updated.
The build quality of these laptops is second-to-none and is typically compared with Apple for good reason. They don’t add a bunch of extra software that just ends up slowing your computer down and they care about speed and performance – my kind of company!
Microsoft Surface Pro 6
Microsoft has come a long way their Surface Pro line. They offer a few great configurations that would work well for a music production laptop.
I recommend the Surface Pro with an Intel i7, 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD.
If you want to stay under $1,000, the Intel Core i5 with 8GB RAM is a lower-budget option. It comes with a MicroSD slot too. You can get one direct from Microsoft here.
The screen size on these is 12.3″ which can a little small, but most people get an external monitor or 2 anyway. Just know that these don’t come with a keyboard – and you’ll likely need to get the Microsoft Surface Dock to give you more ports.
ASUS ROG
‘ROG’ stands for Republic of Gamers and is the gaming line of products from Asus. This means these computers are great for nearly any performance intensive task.
Into gaming? Check out the best gaming microphones.
These laptops come with a ton of ports so you won’t need to spend extra on accessories just to plug your mixers or USB microphones into them.
I’m recommending the 15″ model as that gives you a nice balance of screen real estate and portability for a laptop, but they also have 17″ models as well if you want that extra screen real estate.
Asus ROG Strix Scar II GL504GW
The Asus ROG Strix Scar II GL504GW-DS74 is a brand new model available as of January 2019 and is the perfect laptop for your music recording and mixing needs.
It uses the NVIDIA RTX 2070 graphics card. Many software programs, including most DAWs, make use of the graphic card, which frees up the CPU to do its thing. Also, when you start plugging in 2 or 3 external monitors, you’ll definitely need the extra GPU power.
This version also includes improved cooling, which can keep your computer quieter. This is great as you don’t want to be picking up fan noise when recording.
The processor is an Intel Core i7-8750H, comes with 16GB DDR4 RAM, and an insane 512GB NVMe SSD, perfect for fast performance and storing large files.
Comes with 3x USB 3.0 ports, 1x USB Type-C port, 1x USB 2.0, 1x HDMI, 1x Mini DisplayPort.
Dell XPS 15
The Dell XPS line of laptops has been an excellent choice for a while now. It’s the thinnest 15″ PC laptop around but doesn’t sacrifice performance. The latest version – Dell XPS 9570 – includes Intel’s brand new Coffee Lake processor and a beautiful 4K touchscreen with Gorilla Glass for scratch resistance.
I recommend the XPS9570 4K Touch model with the 8th generation Intel i7-8750H, 16GB RAM, and a 512GB SSD. You’ll also get Nvidia GTX 1050Ti graphics card. You’ll be able to record and edit music, do video editing, and nearly anything else with this.
It comes with an SD card reader and 2 USB 3.0 ports.
Dell XPS 13
Dell recently upgraded the 13″ model for 2018 to include Intel’s 8th generation i7-8550U processor, among many other improvements that make for an excellent upgrade over the previous models.
I recommend the Dell XPS 9370 with a 4K touchscreen, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Fingerprint reader, and more. It has 3x USB-C ports (no USB-A).
It’s still not the most powerful and the graphics card doesn’t really compare with the other laptops highlighted here, but Dell has really put together an impressive ultraportable laptop.
The webcam placement is a little weird at the bottom, so if you plan to use that often I would recommend grabbing the Logitech C920S to go with it.
They also introduced a great new Rose Gold on Alpine White color option.
HP Spectre X360
The HP Spectre X360 is beautiful, versatile and powerful. I recommend the 15″ model updated in mid-2018 with the 8th Generation Intel i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and a Radeon RX Vega graphics card.
This is a “2-in-1″ laptop, meaning that the 4K touchscreen folds backward, effectively making it a tablet. The 15” model is a little under 4.5 lbs, which is a bit heavy to hold one-handed in tablet mode, but great for sharing things or writing. There is also a media mode for watching videos and a tent mode for presentations.
HP was smart by including both a USB Type-A port (the stand rectangle) and 2x USB Type-C ports (the new oval), one of which includes Thunderbolt. They also include an SD Card reader and an HDMI port so you shouldn’t need a bunch of dongles to all your gear connected.
If you want something a little lighter and more portable, there is a new 4K 13″ model that weighs 2.78 lbs. It uses the Intel UHD 620 graphics card, which is actually a slight downgrade compared with the previous 13″ model that had Nvidia 940MX. You do lose the HDMI port with this size though, although an adapter will easily solve that.
The versatility and reasonable price point make both sizes of the Spectre X360 an excellent choice for a Windows-based music production laptop.
Samsung Notebook 9 Pro
Here’s another 2-in-1 laptop, this time by Samsung. The Pro model was just announced at Computex earlier this year. The 15″ Notebook 9 Pro has been updated with Intel’s latest Kaby Lake processors as well and offers decent specs for the price.
Samsung has taken cues from their smartphone line when it comes to design, with thin bezels and more curvature. It comes with an S-Pen (and a slot to hold it) that has 4,000 levels of pressure and the ability to add shading by tilting it.
Similar to the Spectre above, you get both USB 3.0 and USB Type-C, an HDMI port, and an SD Card reader. The 13″ model only comes with 8GB RAM, while the 15″ model gets 16GB. Graphics power is also a lot better in the 15″ model with the AMD Radeon 450 vs Intel HD Graphics 620 in the 13″ version. Because of that, I would stay away from the smaller one for serious music producers.
Best Software For Podcast Recording MacBest Podcast Software For MacPCAudioLabsAudacity
PCAudioLabs specializes in computer equipment for audio production. Their ROK BOX MC Mobile Series line of pro audio laptops lets you custom build a laptop that will fit your production needs and budget.
Final Suggestions
There are many great choices for music production laptops. I would suggest getting the best computer you can for your budget, but try to stay away from “cheap” options – and definitely avoid Chromebooks. You will just run into limitations and issues that take the fun out of your hobby or profession!
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Software For Podcast Recording
Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or if I’m missing anything.
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