Behind every great edit is a lot of patience, stamina and attention to detail. I’ve gotten several messages from people telling me they love how impeccable the editing is on The Nuances Podcast. Well, you all know how much I love to spill the beans, so here are all my secrets.

It is our job to make our guests sound like they could be debating Obama. I don’t care how many hours it takes. Even if I have a guest who stutters, uses lots of filler words, and goes on crazy tangents, by the end of the edit, they will sound eloquent and their main points will get across. You can do this too.

1. Audio cleanup
2. Content cleanup
3. Content editing

BUT HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?

It typically takes me between 1-6 hours of audio cleanup (depending on the guest and everyone’s mic situation). The first few episodes were really painful. After I got my co-host to adjust her setup, the average is now at about 3h per episode.

It’s another 4-10 hours of content cleanup and editing, which includes a full listen-through at the end. The tool will do a lot automatically, but it won’t do everything. This part used to take me about 20 hours. Now it’s about 6 on average.

It then takes me another 1-2h to finalize the episode with all the other components and listen through before exporting.

You may not be willing to put in that much effort, but to me, it’s about going the extra mile to do my guests justice. I have really cool guests and I want them to be proud of their feature on our show, and be proud to share it with their friends & family.

An unedited episode is a waste of everyone’s time. I will die on that hill.

THE ULTIMATE EDITING TOOL

Too much work? That’s what we have tools for!

_{Disclaimer: I will get a small commission at no cost to you if you decide to purchase this tool through my link. Consider it a free way for you to say thank you, by getting someone else to tip me 🙂 I guarantee you, any pro-sounding podcast uses this tool or something very similar.}

AUDIO CLEAN UP

This step is to make sure each speaker’s words are intelligible, and the listening experience is consistent and pleasant, sound-wise. I do not do any content editing here. It’s purely for improving the audio quality and the audio experience. These steps are done in my DAW, on an as-needed basis.

Logic tips & tricks for audio cleanup

I put this short video together to show you how I use various logic functions to speed up the audio cleanup.

MAKE ALL SPEAKERS COMPARABLE IN VOLUME

First, I’ll try to get everyone’s average overall volume to match. If I randomly play audio from one speaker then from another, it shouldn’t be a jarring contrast in levels.

CLIP GAINING

That’s a fancy word for adjusting the volume of a small section of an audio track. I do the following

• Reduce the loudness of laughters. Usually they’re hotter than the speaking volume.
• Reduce or remove the gasps at the end of laughter. Those can sound very jarring, especially in headphones.
• If your speaker had a crappy mic or crappy connection, you may have to go in and manually adjust bits of phrases so that they’re all at a consistent level. I recently had to do this and it took me about 10 hours just to do the audio cleanup phase. It is painful, but I promise you, if you don’t do it, no one’s going to listen to the episode except maybe the most hardcore fans.

Remove plosives

Only as needed.

De-ess

Only needed if one of your speakers has very sibilant esses. If this affects one of the regular hosts, you can have their settings saved in your DAW template.

EQ / noise gate

If there’s room fan noise or other ambient noise, a noise gate might do the trick.

If the speaker is dialing in from their phone, you may want to use EQ and light saturation to give it some heft and some air.

If this affects one of the regular hosts, you can have their settings saved in your DAW template.

Export your combined audio

That’s the end of audio cleanup. Export your combined audio and import it into the editing tool

CONTENT CLEANUP

If you are not using an editing tool other than your DAW, your life is about to change. Trust me. I caught so many more filler words, and was able to edit so much faster than before. Yes, it still takes me 3-10 hours. But it used to take me 15-20 hours per episode to get it to the quality that I want. So… Trust me, you won’t regret it. Podcastland is already saturated with poorly edited podcasts. Don’t be one of them.

Filler words

Remove filler words (um, and er, aaaaaand, you know, idk, i feel like, it’s like, so like, but like, all the likes). There’s a function to automatically remove those in the tool!

Unless your guest is an expert toastmaster or public speaker, they will most likely use some filler words. While we don’t notice them when we are participating in the conversation, these are distracting to passive listeners who are listening after the fact. Remove them for your listeners’ sake.

UNNECESSARY PHRASES

Be aggressive in your editing. I’ll remove unnecessary phrases like “well i feel like” or “i think” if they use it a lot. They are speaking, so it’s obviously what they think.

If they use any preamble that isn’t adding to the story, like “so I think probably what’s interesting is”. That’s 7 words that didn’t tell the listener anything new. It needs to go. If you want the listener to really connect with the story being told, and feel all the feels, you need to minimize any distraction.

A listener who wasn’t present during the interview will easily get lost in those extra words. They’ll tune out, they’ll disconnect emotionally, or they’ll forget what you’re talking about by the time the actual point is made. It’s a lot easier to follow when you’re part of the conversation, but it’s so much harder when you’re listening while multi-tasking, and without video as visual cue.

This may be particularly helpful for people with ADHD too.

So for your listener’s benefit, be sure to make the points as concise as you can, without losing their essence.

LAUGHS

Shorten laughs that last too long. Your listener won’t be laughing for that long when they’re listening to your podcast while they’re working out at the grocery store or making dinner. So just include the bare minimum and keep it moving.

WORD GAPS

Shorten word gaps. With experience you’ll learn that changing the word gap can make the flow more natural. Sometimes you need to lengthen them, if your speaker goes a mile a minute. Often you’ll need to reduce them. There’s also a function for that in the tool!

CONTENT EDITING

Now you have to put on your journalist/editor hat. How do you get to the essence of what is being said in a way that truly makes their point shine?

TANGENTS MUST GO

Remove extraneous detail that is tangential to the main point. This is the key to a great flowing podcast. Your listeners are not seeing you, they’re not on the zoom call. So while it may be entertaining for those participating in the call to go on a small detour around a tangential topic, but it doesn’t necessarily add to your listener’s experience or enjoyment of the podcast. Keep it moving.

SELF INDULGENCE MUST GO

Cut out anything that’s an aside or that makes sense in a face-to-face conversation to say, but isn’t really contributing to the main conversation. For example, in Ep. 9 with Sally, we were talking about how Facebook has changed over the years. In the original audio, I mentioned that I wish I could go back and delete anything I posted before 2015. It made sense to say it as we were chatting, but that doesn’t add to my listener’s experience, so it gets chopped off with no regrets.

MISINFORMATION/ CONJECTURE WITHOUT substance should go

Cut out anything that you, as a podcast host and brand, do not feel comfortable broadcasting.

If they come on your show and they claim something as truth when you know that they don’t know what they’re talking about, or that they’re outright wrong, then I feel it is in both of your interests not to embarrass yourselves by disseminating false information.

Now, I’m not saying to suppress your guest’ voice. That is not at all what I mean.

Controversial opinion is fine.

Eg: “I do not think I should have a say in what happens to my body”.

This is clearly how someone feels about a certain topic. You might not agree, but it is still clearly an expression of their opinion.

Correcting or calling you out is fine.

Eg: “Actually my pronouns are they/them”.

Just because you’re the host doesn’t mean you should know everything. So if that happens, use the opportunity to apologize and seek to understand if you’re confused. Teachable moments are gems.

But alternative facts are not.

Eg: “The vaccine will give me a 5G enabled chip” or “horse medicine cures covid” or any other statement claimed as fact when there is no way to prove it or where there is plenty of evidence against it.

Leaving this in would be willfully spreading misinformation. Do you really want to be in the same bucket as Joe Rogan?

Presumably, you choose your guests wisely so that they have valuable perspectives to share. But even then, there may be times when they say something that makes you uncomfortable, not because it’s calling you out, but because it’s wrong or misleading, and it feels icky to leave it in without being able to substantiate that claim.

EXPORT

Once you’re happy with your edit, give it a final listen, then export.