Last year at Moosecamp2006 I talked about the importance of getting the overall sound levels right in your podcasts, and how to do it. This year, I'll review that and introduce an important new topic: how to get the levels within a podcast consistent. If you've ever podcast a phone/Skype interview you'll know that you often end up with one person loud and the other person quiet. Same thing if you have more than one person in the "studio", or even you just move closer and farther from the mic during recording.

Those level variations can drive your listeners crazy (and drive them away from your podcast) but until recently it was a problem that could only be fixed with expensive hardware (mixers, etc.) or by spending lots of time editing in post-production.

The good news is that there is now a free tool that solves this problem for you automagically. The Levelator is software that was developed for the volunteer team at IT Conversations for just this purpose.. The UI is dirt-simple: drag-and-drop any WAV or AIFF file onto The Leveler's application window, and a few moments later you'll find a new version which just sounds better. It runs on Windows, OS X (universal binary) and Linux.

In this presentation I'll review the issues of podcast levels, and show how to get the most out of free tools like Audacity and The Levelator to make your podcasts sound just like you know what you're doing!

Bruce Sharpe

(co-author of The Levelator)

http://www.singularsoftware.com