5 Steps to Having Your Podcast Sound Like it was Recorded in a GRAMMY Winning Production Studio

Mike:

Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of From the Stage to the Screen. This is the show where we take all the best practices from your favorite concerts, your favorite albums, your favorite productions, and we bring those to you, the content creators, the streamers, the gamers, the business presenters. It doesn't matter whether you're just starting out or if you've already got that massive following, we're here today to give you actionable and concrete items that will help you tell more impactful and better stories. I'm your host Mike Dias with Earthworks Audio. And today we'll be speaking with Michael Bader, chief engineer for John Marshall Media. John Marshall Media has done over 10,000 of your favorite podcasts. So today we're going to get right into it and just go right for the meat.

Mike:

Michael, thank you so much for joining us. And I want to know, how do you captivate and hold an audience's attention with just your voice?

Michael:

Thanks, Mike. I'm excited to be here. That's kind of the million-dollar question. Isn't it? When you only have the voice to work with, how do you make it interesting? I think that's not just in audiobooks and production but in podcasts, and with a lot of people, they've been going through that with just doing meetings and webcasting from home. And really, it all comes down to audio. Right? There's been this great statistic that's gone around that people perceive you to be 20% more trustworthy and intelligent and knowledgeable about a topic when you're broadcasting in good quality audio. I think that really just says a lot because just like in real life, if you couldn't hear someone, you would fix it before you moved on with the conversation. So it should be when you're broadcasting as well.

Mike:

First of all, that's amazing. It dovetails to everything that we know and experience, but let's get into it then. How do I know what is good audio? How do I get that?

Michael:

I mean, again, those are the big questions and it's gotten tougher over time, not really by anyone's fault but as everyone's gone more mobile and everyone moves around listening. It's not people sitting at home with their high five systems, it's people moving around on their phones. If you're on a small set of earbuds compared to a big set of speakers, you can only get so much. Like you said, figuring out what good sound is, is important. And when you get those really good podcasts, when you get those really good audiobooks, when you're listening to professional voiceover for movies and advertising and stuff like that, the more you listen, the more you can tell what's good and what's not. The other side of that is, as an audio engineer, we're trained to hear stuff that normal people shouldn't even have to be concerned with hearing. Sometimes it's great and sometimes that's why you should hire an engineer because if you really learn to hear all the stuff you don't want to hear, normal conversation would get spoiled for you.

Mike:

Well, let's stay on that for a second. Again, if the whole point of all this is giving really usable feedback, let's talk about bad sound. Let's start there. It's kind of like the opening band for the headliner. Right?

Michael:

Right. Definitely.

Mike:

So yeah, what's bad sound? What are things that we can all tease out?

Michael:

Well, a lot of it comes from what's around you. We kind of take for granted how much of what we're hearing is the actual, what we call the sound source or the person's voice itself versus how much of it is the space. In a recording studio, a lot of times you'll see musicians record in really big rooms when they do their vocals. But one of the first things the engineers will do is go throw a carpet under them, over the hardwood because that reverb of their voice might be really nice, but those crazy reflections coming off of the wood floor is going to be a little too much. And when someone's at home, that might be something as simple as putting a rug under them, putting a curtain on the window behind them, or maybe even realizing that you have an air vent directly behind you. So if you point the mic back this way, instead of back this way at the air vent, it's going to make a big difference and you won't be hearing that.

Michael:

When I was learning audio, one of the best phrases that I was ever taught is, miking something is almost as much about what you want to reject as what you want to pick up. So really consider that comes down to the space, that comes down to what kind of instrument or what kind of person you're recording, but really considering that makes a huge difference.

Mike:

Got it, got it. Okay. So help me understand why I would put down a rug. Or when someone says a room is dead or a room has too much boom, what does that mean?

Michael:

So it's kind of the difference between talking in a bathroom full of mirrors and talking in your bedroom with carpet and bed and drapes, where when you talk in the room full of mirrors... A lot of people love to sing in the bathroom, they think it sounds really good, but if I went to record that, it would be really echoey. It would be really hollow sounding, and it wouldn't sound like a good vocal that's well produced. It would sound like a good singer in a bedroom.

Michael:

I actually just moved recently. This is my new room that I got to set up, that I don't have as much on the walls yet, but getting there. But one of the things that I had a couple of my friends do, and they checked it out, was walk to the other side. This is the larger basement. You can walk to the other side where there's no sound treatment and talk and hear so much more of your voice, whereas when you walk over to the treated area, you hear what dead sounds like. You hear what it sounds like when there's not a lot of reflections going on all around the room. So it's really just having quiet around you and just kind of the way your voice interacts with spaces. Again, it's like a thing that audio engineers are trained to hear that normal people don't pay as much attention to because they don't need to. And if you did, you'd be constantly distracted.

Mike:

So is that what I want? I want a dead room?

Michael:

Sometimes. And really, for speaking, that's always going to be better. When you're recording music, when you're recording with a band, when you go to recording studios, you'll see varying types and sizes of rooms. And sometimes that's because they've tailored it specifically so that there is a little more reverberation in the room because that's what they want. However, that studio is almost always going to have a separate, smaller, isolated, and deader room to do vocals in. Because even though that big room sounds great sometimes, being able to have a very controlled original signal makes everyone's life easier because then later on, you can always go and effect it. If I want to make it sound like I'm in a bigger space once I'm done, I can do that. But if I have a less than ideal large space that I'm working with and I want to remove it after the fact, that gets to be significantly harder.

Mike:

Oh, this makes perfect sense. Okay. Okay. So let's say I'm a podcaster or a YouTube creator. I've got thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of views already. What are the tells that my room could have a little bit better treatment? What do I put my ear out for so I can kind of continue to sneak up on perfection?

Michael:

Well, a lot of it kind of comes down to comparing sometimes. And like we had said at the beginning, you have to kind of know what's good audio. So if I'm recording at home, I'm going to take my first listen to a podcast that was recorded at a professional studio and then say, "All right, what's the difference? What do I hear?" Or I should say, "What do I not hear from this studio that I do hear from my space and where can I kind of bridge the gap?" Because from a studio, when we record a podcast at our studios, our rooms are not just dead in terms of their limited reflections, but there's a very low noise floor.

Michael:

Audio engineers talk a lot about the noise floor and that's just what's going on around you. But not just people talking in the other room or things like that, it's things like air conditioning, it's things like the hum from your laptop fan or something like that. Those little noises are things that you definitely won't hear in a studio, that as you start to listen to things at home, you can kind of pick out, hear a little bit of fan in the background or there's a little bit of hum from an AC going on. Those are little things you can start to look at to clean up. But things like, if you unfortunately have to record in your New York apartment in the summer and you have to keep a fan on, it's going to be there. It's just really working with, okay, what's the best position for it and how do I make a bad situation better? The best decision is always going to be, call us and come to the studio because we're happy to help. But if you can't, you can work to make a bad situation better.

Mike:

I mean, it makes perfect sense. And I got to say, man, you sound great right now. Okay, so I want to listen for the room reflection. Ideally, I want my room to be as dead as possible if I'm doing vocals. I want to listen for ambient noise, floor noise. What else do I listen for?

Michael:

I mean, I think there's a lot included in that. And the truth is listening for all of the little things sometimes. Because the way I've always said it is, the prefects micro comes into play here. When we use a microphone and if your ears hear it a little, a microphone hears it a lot. So if you think there might be a little something in the background, the microphone is sure there's something in the background and it's definitely going to pick it up because it's meant to magnify, it's meant to pick up things that your ears only keep in the background at a very low level and that your brain kind of helps to filter out.

Mike:

I want to jive on that for a minute because as I've started doing more and more of this, that's something that blows my mind. And I think a lot of people in photography and videography can relate this to lighting. Right? The way that a microphone picks up sound is very similar to the way a camera picks up light. And it's different than how my ears and eyes do it. So how do you think like a microphone?

Michael:

Well, I mean, some of that is just practice and some of that is really getting your ears detailed. Audio engineers that are really the best at it have done a lot of listening, have just practiced, and have learned to pick out things that really most people, like I said, should ignore. If everyone went to listen to stuff like this, you'd get bothered by a lot of the things you listen to.

Michael:

But I think that... Some of it, you do see audio engineers do ridiculous things when they're listening. They'll do this and they'll move around a room and they'll see what position actually sounds best. It looks silly, but it does work. And really paying attention to what's the difference when I stand here versus when I stand 10 feet from here. Well, there is a big difference. Like I said, you hear it a little so a microphone hears it a lot. If you move the microphone here versus even a few feet from here, it's going to sound different and it's not going to be that same warmer sound. It's not going to be that same thing you were going for necessarily.

Mike:

Okay. So tell me about mic placement. First, I want to talk about mic placement, then I want to talk about what you just said about being in the room, actually recording in a different space in your room.

Michael:

Yeah. I mean, placement is always going to be one of the most important things, and that even comes down to which direction is it pointing in. When we do voiceover, we're really concerned extra with having the mic in this style of placement because angling it down towards the floor, the floor is usually going to have carpet. And then also getting more of the voice of a person of the chest voice versus the higher nasal end of the voice is going to be a little bit more pleasing. So with this placement, you're picking up more of the covered carpet versus the uncovered and reflective ceiling. And you're being able to get more of that person's fullness in their chest voice versus the higher part of their nasal voice.

Mike:

Timeout. I got to call a flag. Is this real? Can you show me a demo? Can you change it back and forth?

Michael:

Yeah.

Mike:

It can't make that big of a difference.

Michael:

I mean, it definitely makes a decent difference. I will say, I happen to love my Earthworks ETHOS, and this thing does sound great in most positions so it might not do as much with this one. But starting from the down, if you then change it to come to somewhere like this, it does start to sound different because you're getting a different angle. And again, it's what's behind you. I'm not pointing at my panels and my carpet and my couch anymore, I'm pointing at the ceiling.

Mike:

Do that again.

Michael:

So when I come back up top, you can definitely hear, I hope, how things are going to get more full and things are actually... Again, like you were saying, hear the difference. If you haven't heard the difference, you might put a mic down here. It's out of the way, it's decently close. The distance to my mouth isn't actually changing when I move it, it's just the angle. We usually do that, like hang loose sign, and we're going to do voiceover so we keep it about this far. If I'm keeping it at this distance and I go from here to here, it changes what it's picking up around me.

Mike:

Unreal. I'm cheating a little bit because I've got ears in and so I could hear your difference like night and day. So let's talk about how you monitor, how you listen, and how you can hear that. And what tools can you do to get better information, to make better decisions?

Michael:

Well, that's one of the biggest things. And when I'm monitoring for voiceover, almost, I'll say always, there must be headphones in the mix. When you're monitoring for music, when you're monitoring for other things, you can get away with monitors, you can get away with some kind of speaker. But for something like this, for voiceover, when you're really looking to hear what your room sounds like and what the whole picture sounds like, headphones are really going to do it because they're going to get more intimate, they're going to let you hear the room. And when things are a little more reflective or a little more roomy sounding, that's what's really going to show you the best.

Mike:

Okay. So when I'm practicing, when I'm rehearsing by myself, I can play around with all these different mic placements, I can play around with where I want to be in the room. It's not a big deal. I can move my desk a little bit if I want to, or I could move the fan. Right? And then I could hear it with my headphones and I can nail it. And then am I able to go live without the headphones now that I feel comfortable and confident?

Michael:

Yeah. Once you have the sound checked, then it's hopefully not going to change if you haven't changed anything. Of course, my policy anytime is going to be no surprises. So if I did the setup beforehand, the morning of, I'm still going to get on and check and put on my headphones and make sure that everything is still doing what I want it to do. But once I verified that, then I can get myself comfortable, then I can get into my recording position and make whatever content I want to make.

Michael:

The other thing that is just kind of worth talking about, I always feel like, is talking on a mic and position on a mic. One thing that headphones can be really helpful for, for people that are not as experienced with talking on a mic is knowing when you've moved too far away.

Mike:

Yeah, we got something like that.

Michael:

So in your headphones, if you're hearing yourself when you first start recording, if you are not familiar with staying on a mic and mic placement... Voice actors are really good at keeping the mic in front of them, keeping their position, even when they want to yell, even when they want to make a posh acting choice or something like that, they know how to keep themselves on mic. But oftentimes, you see people with less experience on microphones. And again, why should people have experience on microphones? It's not something you do very often.

Michael:

But one of my favorites is, when you're at a wedding, you see someone give a toast and they're holding the mic down by their belly button. And everyone's having trouble hearing them and all the audio engineers or one audio engineer in the crowd is sitting there thinking, "Well yeah, no one's going to hear that. Put the mic to your mouth." That's a very basic thing but very important. And while you don't have to record in headphones, headphones really help that because as you're listening to yourself, when you move too far off the mic, you'll hear it and you'll readjust yourself in your seat.

Mike:

Yeah. So you could really train yourself. Hold on one second. We got a question. Actually, we got a statement. So I took your advice when you were talking, and I changed the position of my mic. It was pointing up. I'm in an old mill building. I was getting reflection from the ceiling, I put it down. And forgive me because my ears are better than my eyes so I'm going to lean forward to see this. "I wanted to know what you used to cover the mic." I think that's what it says.

Michael:

Yeah. So this one, this is just a windscreen. This one came with ETHOS. And a lot of mics, Shure 57 or the SM7 or something like that, a lot of mics will come with a windscreen. But honestly, you can use kind of anything. In a pinch, I've had people at home go for a not terribly heavy sock. That can help. You don't want something that's big and whole because that's going to start to muffle you and that's going to start to take away frequency. This is a microphone wind cover that's designed to keep wind noise out, but allow frequencies in. But something as simple, I have a Rode condenser mic that I use, and I use the case that it came in. It came in a little protective case, and I use that when I record with it because it just kind of keeps the high frequencies a little bit tamer. So anything that's not too thick, anything that's just going to kind of reduce a little bit of that very sharp, high frequency, direct sound will kind of help as well.

Mike:

I love it. All right. So clearly, you have recorded people for voice before the pandemic, after the pandemic, during the pandemic. Were there any projects where you had a lot of people recording at once, where you got to hear and see and then try to normalize all of these problems? The reason I ask, because I want more problems. Because if we have problems, then we have solutions.

Michael:

Yeah. So actually, this is still one of my favorite projects I've ever gotten to work on. This was a compilation book called Notes from the Bathroom Line. It was put together by Amy Solomon. It was a compilation of all these great funny pieces by female comedians and actors and screenwriters. And it was amazing to work on. But honestly, the audiobook happened like it did because of pandemic, because everyone was stuck at home. So people on the book like Beanie Feldstein, Cecily Strong, they could record their own pieces. They did this from home and we had a lot of people who we kind of sent USB mics out to to make it work when we had to.

Michael:

Recording with Beanie Feldstein, we were lucky enough that she was actually working on some animation at the time so she had been sent a rig to use. She had an Apollo and a good mic, but she was sitting in a closet when we recorded that piece. And there were a lot of people who we did a little bit of playing with the setup. And thank you to anyone that was on that, that recorded with a blanket over their head because it happened once or twice.

Michael:

One of the things that it made me realize is mistaking a quiet room for a room that you can actually record in. And this is something that people wouldn't, again, you wouldn't ordinarily think of this, but I spoke to a several people that tried to set up in what they thought was the quietest room in their house. It was in the back of the house. There was not much going on around it, but it was the living room that had hardwood floors and no window treatments. And while it was very quiet in there, speaking sounded very echoey and very reflective. It sounded like you were in a large room and it was much easier, again, thanks to everyone that was willing to do it, to go sit in a closet and throw a blanket over your head. Is it the most pleasant way to record? No, I've done it myself, but it is effective. And when you hear it, it's like night and day, going from a large room to just a smaller space that's not allowing those really echoey bits of the audio to make it to the microphone.

Mike:

It is entirely possible you just created a new YouTube genre.

Michael:

I look forward to it because you know what, at least they'll sound good.

Mike:

All right. So what I love about this is, I'm not just the host of the show, I'm a client. Right? I have a list of notes that I can do to improve just from everything you've given me so far. But if there's anything more, like the minute we get off this, I'm going to be, "Oh, I forgot about this," how do I get in touch with you or someone like you? You do consultancy work not just for voiceover artists, but for business presenters. You're able to teach me, us, the collective we, these tricks. Right?

Michael:

Yeah. It's something, again, that I kind of started doing during pandemic a lot more because people were forced to speak on a microphone in broadcast that never even believed that would be required of them. And getting back to what we talked about at the beginning, we know that you need to sound good for people to really take in what you're hearing. And for professional development, when you're doing webinars, when you're doing meetings and anything like that, it's always going to benefit you to have better sound quality. So I have been doing a lot of that. And those present interesting challenges because one, most people aren't going to sound treat a room in their house just so that they can run webinars and meetings.

Michael:

But the other challenge really becomes when video gets incorporated and you're actually running webinars where you're presenting on video. And so your sound is a little restricted by, I can't put a mic here because this coming through my camera doesn't look quite as presentable as I'd like. This is the same thing that sound engineers have been dealing with on movie sets for years and years. The boom operator is doing all he can to get the sound right, but the director's yelling at him to keep the mic out of the shot. You know? So it's something that presents a lot of different challenges, but like we've said, there are little things that you can do to start making improvements. And once you've done three or four little things, now you have a larger improvement to your sound.

Mike:

Okay, so I get that improvement and then I want that little extra, do I have to hire you forever? Can I get just an hour or two of your time? How does that work?

Michael:

So usually the way that I'll do consults is, we start with an hour or two. Basically, we're going to get onto a call. We're going to listen to the audio. I'm going to take a sound check. So we'll find some way to record it. If you don't have recording software, we can use QuickTime, or I always love REAPER for this. I always say REAPER is the best backup on the planet because when you work at studios, you really can't get away from using pro tools, but it's so functional and it's so easy and they let you use that trial with all of the features. So if you ever need to record into something like that, REAPER is great for it.

Mike:

This episode of From the Stage to the Screen, brought to you by REAPER.

Michael:

No sponsorship, I swear. It's just software I've really enjoyed using. But record it and then I can download it and kind of check it on my end. Again, you can get a pretty good sense over streaming, but I don't leave any surprises so I'm always going to want to verify it and check it in my own DAW. But once we've checked it and once I've gotten an ear on it, then we can kind of take it from there and assess what's going on. It's really just all about listening to it.

Michael:

If I can't listen to it, it's like somebody cooked a meal and then just told you all of the ingredients they used and said, "Wouldn't that taste good?" Well, I don't know. I don't know how you put them together. And if you did put them together, I don't even know if you did it right. So someone can call me and say, "Hey, I put all this treatment in my studio," and, "Hey, I did all of this. Is that going to work?" And I'll go, "Can I hear it?" Because I don't know, maybe you did it, but maybe you put it all over there and you're still pointing a mic at the one empty wall you have back here. So it's not going to sound as good as you think it is.

Mike:

Okay. So just with a quick consult, an hour or two, you really can fine tune everything we've just talked about. I love that. Because look, I don't want to overshare but I will say, the reason that I'm doing these shows, the reason I'm so excited about it, and I hope some of this translates right, I have spent my whole professional career at the intersection of consumer electronics and pro audio, which means I have wonderful friends who work in some of the world's greatest retail stores like B&H and I have other friends who travel the world with some of the greatest musicians. For example, like you, what you do in your day to day, the people you work with, and then to be able to help the new generation of creators. That's, to me, what the most exciting part of this future, is how do we beat the bridge to bring everyone together? And I see this happening because look, if Springsteen can get his own number one podcast, then Springsteen's engineer should be able to help me dial in my sound a little bit better. Right?

Michael:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's something that I've always been passionate about as well. And it's taking kind of the overall level, it's raising all of our levels, and if we can have everyone from the home content creators up getting better quality products, then we're all going to look for it. Engineers are going to have more to do because they're going to be helping people get these better quality products, whether it's through consult or whether it's through just full on production work. But if everybody ups their quality, then we'll have raised quality.

Mike:

We all win. Yeah.

Michael:

Yeah. That's right. That's a better way to say it.

Mike:

Me who's watching content, consuming content, it brings me in and hooks me more. Michael, I think we're hitting a nerve because we got a lot of questions. So give me a second. I'm going to lean in.

Michael:

Yeah.

Mike:

Yeah. Okay. So one listener wants to know, what mics connections, DAWs, the whole signal chain that we're using right now.

Michael:

So right now I'm running my Earthworks ETHOS into an Apollo. It's an Apollo Twin. It's a slightly older Apollo Twin. And that's it. I'm not really doing anything else to it. I am sitting in a room where I put area rugs over carpeting that was already there. I have sound treatment going on around the room, large couch. A lot of it is just about this space. If I took this same into a cathedral room, it's going to sound echoey because that's just the space I'm in. Yeah.

Mike:

You answered two for one because there was another question about the best ways to treat space.

Michael:

Well yeah, I mean, like we said before, nobody's really going to expect you to sound treat a space. Most people aren't going to call GIK and start ordering panels and whatever they need, although GIK has great stuff. But things like having a couch behind you, things like having a bookshelf behind you because sound diffusers are large and hard to build and expensive to buy, but if you put a bookshelf behind you that has differentiating depths, it's not perfect but it is better.

Mike:

Bingo. And me, I'm using the Icon Pro plugged right into a Focusrite. And I am in an old mill building from turn of the century. Its ceilings are almost 20 feet, lot of old piping, and we got a couple sound panels on the wall. But that's me. Let me lean in to get one more question. So, mics are one of the most expensive pieces of equipment here, but they're all different with different properties. Yeah. So the question is, somebody recently bought a condenser microphone that is claimed to behave like a dynamic, but they have to be right up on it to make it work. So really, how do you choose a microphone?

Michael:

That's a great question. And that's a question that takes a lot of testing. Back in the golden days of recording and microphones and studios and all that, choosing a mic was usually done with a shootout. If you brought a new vocalist into the studio, you would take all your favorite vocal mics and you'd set them up and you'd have them sing or speak or whatever they're doing into each one. You'd have a day for it and you'd find out what suits their voice the best, what's going to treat the space the best, what's going to treat the person the best, and what's going to work the best for them. Nobody has that kind of time anymore. And it is very difficult to know, especially now with all the different types going USB or going XLR connected, what's going to work.

Michael:

The basic kinds, going with a Shure 58 is never going to be wrong. I've put one of those on every sound source you can come up with that I've recorded, and it's always sounded good. Picking a microphone really kind of comes down to what are your needs. So if you're only webcasting, you're only doing vocals, you might want to look for something that is just dynamic, that is a little simpler. It doesn't need to be the most detailed thing in the world necessarily because while you want your voice to sound good, you don't need to hear every time I have some mouth clicks and need a drink of water. Maybe that's not what you're doing if you're going to stream, versus if you're going to be sitting at home and recording a cello, you're probably going to want to mic that picks up a little bit more detail and has some of that enhanced quality and go for the condenser. But really, a lot of it just kind of comes down to either experiment, or call an engineer. I'm happy to help.

Mike:

Thank you. Yeah. There's one more piece I'd like to overlay with this, is that this is why B&H excels, why this event space exists so that A, people can hear us talk in different microphones, so we can talk about sound. And also because B&H, if you look at what they've done for photography and video, the sheer amount of information that's available on their website, the knowledge base that they have and that all of their sales professionals have, it's pretty mind boggling. Right? They are a wealth of information and resource. So please always consult with your reseller as well. They're here to help. They're really here to walk you through and to provide solutions.

Michael:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, going somewhere like B&H and you'll talk to someone, they know what mics they have. And if you go to them, "Hey, I'm looking to podcast. I live in an apartment that's not far from Time Square, and I don't want it to be crazy loud. What would you recommend?"

Mike:

Boom. They got you.

Michael:

Especially at this point, you're not the first person to ask. This is something that lots of people are doing. You're not coming at us with a question that's like, "Hey, is it really weird if I want to do a podcast from the back of my kitchen?" No, no, it's not. And you know what? We can make it work. Whenever it is, we can find a way to make it work.

Mike:

So we spent a lot of time about talking about the individual content creator and what they can do, but I want to pick your brain on this because I think you have an insight. I have a belief that we are also seeing a transition for companies, right? The room I'm in right now used to be our conference. Right now it's a production studio. I can't be the only one who's going through this. So how does this advice work for companies that are also transitioning? How do they figure out how to create their own content and to take control of what their direct relationships with their customers, both in terms of a marketing but in a communications, in a one-to-one relationship, and sound and look professional?

Michael:

It's a great question. And it's something that as I do more consulting, I've talked to people from some companies who say, "My company just started building a studio at our office and we're not entirely sure who's going to run it. We need some help knowing what to put in it, but we're building one because we're doing three webinars a week and we need somewhere to do it out of people who are just sitting at their desks on their laptops and it's not working." And I understand that. That makes perfect sense and that's what everyone's been going through at home. But now, some of remote land that we've gone into is here to stay. So webinars and broadcasting your content, whether you're doing it from home or from the office is I don't think leaving anytime soon and probably ever. Having that space is really becoming important, so I understand people who are wanting to put more into setting that up in companies that are doing that.

Michael:

But I will say, one of the biggest pitfalls that people encounter is that they think in terms of designing a room, not in terms of making a room sound good. And that's always the first thing. I've met a lot of people that have come to me and said like, "Hey, I have this room that we set up the studio in, what can we do to make it sound better?" And unfortunately, half the time, my first comment is, "Do you have another room that you could use potentially that's maybe a third the size and doesn't have AC ducts in it?" And a lot of times, they don't, which is understandable because if you're going to put this in an office, companies, you're going to use the space you have. You can't always build the space for a studio. Why we all decided to put recording studios in the middle of Manhattan is always going to boggle my mind a little bit because not only is it the loudest and most radio interference full place that you could be, but nowhere in New York is set up to be a recording studio.

Michael:

Anytime you're going to build a studio, one of your biggest costs is renovation because you have to start by building out your space so that it's treated for sound. And honestly, the earlier on you address that in the process, the easier it's going to be. Because if you've built an entire room and now you need to stack sound treatment on top of it, this is where we get into like, "Oh, maybe this won't look good for video," or, "Oh, we're kind of limited by how this room is set up and how we need to angle things." Whereas if you're actually going to build a room for this and you can think about it at the beginning, you can call an acoustician, you can call an audio engineer who can say, "Okay, we can build an extra wall layer. We can insulate in the middle. We can green glue and we can make it so that it only looks like regular walls, but it sounds like a studio." So it kind of depends on where in the process you decide to address the sound. That's really one of the biggest things.

Mike:

Makes perfect sense. And it actually brings up something else I wanted to pick your brain about. If hybrid's really here to stay and that this is a skill we all need to learn how to understand better, how do we be better storytellers? How do we present better? How do we look more intelligent when we're presenting because we sound good? What are certain things that I can continue to do at home and some things that I really should never try to do at home? And what are things that I can get a pass and not take to the studio, but what are those other things that I really should go to the studio with?

Michael:

Yeah. So just in terms of recording, what I always tell everyone is, come to the studio, come to me for vocals, and come to me for drums. If you're doing vocals only, if you can come to the studio, that's great. If you're doing drums, please don't try and do drums at home. I love doing drums and I'm happy to do them at the studio, come to the studio for drums. It will make the difference. But in general, part of it comes down to preparation and it's the balance of preparation. How do I prepare but how do I not over prepare?

Michael:

One thing that I always tell people that come to the studio, whether you're a musician, whether you're a voice actor, whatever you're doing, the engineer always knows when you did your homework or not. I can hear it when you record. And if you're trying to work through a part for the first time, even if you're doing a really good job of it, it sounds slightly different than someone who's actually read through it at least maybe once or twice, or practiced through it a couple of times and actually knows what's coming at them. There is also no replacement for genuine inspiration. And if you're ever in the studio with me doing music, for my musicians, I always build time at the end of the session. I want them to rehearse their parts. I want them to know what they're doing when they come in. But I also want to take the last hour to go, "All right, let's run through this and let you improv. What'd you come up with while you were recording this? Because there's definitely something that might have hit you in the moment."

Michael:

But preparation and at least just kind of knowing what's coming at you. If you're doing an audiobook, you're doing a voiceover, you don't need to read every line of it five times because then, you're probably going to overthink it. But if you go through it once and just kind of get your ideas down, then you have a much better basis to start from so that you can intentionally take it in a direction. It's like the difference between someone who recorded a grunge album at home on a little four-track tape recorder and didn't put anything in the right place and listening to a Nirvana album where everything's distorted on purpose. It's the difference between messing it up by accident and messing it up on purpose. And if I get a really good place to start, I can then make it take turns myself. We always say, engineers are kind of professional control freaks. It's what we do. I want to take a controlled source and then I can make it do whatever I want.

Michael:

And in terms of performance, one of the things we talk about in audiobooks and voiceover especially is kind of discovering things along with the listener. The real good performance has come when if I'm listening to an audiobook, it sounds like the person reading it is discovering it along with me and it's not just them reciting a thing they rehearsed. I want to hear the actual performance of it. And so it's that balance, it's that kind of tightrope walk between preparing and not over preparing.

Mike:

Yeah. Yeah. That's what I really wanted to... We've peeled the onion. Here we are. So let me circle right back around and ask the same question that we started with, how do you captivate and hold someone's attention with just your voice? And you've talked about the balance of practice and rehearsal but not too much, and of all the things to listen for and what to do. But now that we're there, is there anything else? Now that we've got the technical, what's that last piece that you've had a chance to learn from watching tens of thousands of professionals do?

Michael:

I'm trying to think of the right way to say it because be normal is not really a good way to say it and it doesn't really get the point across. But that thing of practicing, that thing of being comfortable, and it's really... Part of it too is kind of having an extra ear on it. I know a lot of voice actors and musicians and audio engineers, they kind of learn how to listen with a little bit of a third-party perspective on it and you can kind of hear like, "Okay, this is how I'm reciting it. How's this going to strike somebody else?"

Michael:

One of the best critiques that I ever used to get on music mixes and stuff like that is when I send them to just family and friends who are not audio engineers. And I go, "How does this sound to you? If you put this on the radio next to everything else you listen to on the radio, would it make sense?" Because a person's power to go, "That sounds funny," or, "That doesn't sound like something I'd normally hear," is really strong. For an audio engineer, maybe I can go, "Hey, that sounds kind of boxy. I need to take out right around 250, 300 hertz. There's something in there that's not resonating right." Well, that's great, but if I call my cousin and have them listen to something and they go, "You know, that sounds funny. I don't know what it is, but it sounds funny," that means a lot to me because 95% of the people that hear this are not audio engineers. They're people that are just going to be going, "That sounds funny," and then they're not going to listen anymore because it sounds funny.

Michael:

So once you get that ear on it, once you have a listen to that, and as an audio engineer, I can then sort of probe people and go, "All right, what is it that sounds funny and where is it? And how can I get to that?" But getting that ear on it, and from a content side, just kind of being comfortable with your material and being sort of confident in your material so that you're ready to present what you want to present. I think especially now with podcasts, people listen to so many and there are so many that when you're doing just a fully rehearsed, fully read, like you're reading off a text, everyone knows, and that's not what they want to hear. They want to hear people have a conversation. That's the best part of a podcast, is that I get to be involved in someone else's conversation that I wouldn't ordinarily get to be involved in.

Mike:

So how does that work with authenticity and creativity?

Michael:

I think it's something where you either need to make the decision to start focusing on that a little yourself, or you need to kind of bring in someone to kind of consult for you. Because if you're somebody who is in finance and you want to do a podcast about funds or investment or whatever you want to talk about, you shouldn't then have to think, "Okay, how do I be engaging? How do I make myself interesting? When should I throw in jokes? Do I need to learn some jokes? I'm not very funny. What should I be doing?" Well, that's not something you should really need to pay attention to. You're the expert on the topic. You understand what information needs to be brought to the content, what you really need to find if you're not on that side of how to be engaging, how to be creative, how to package the content so that it's really going to be easily digestible by the listeners.

Michael:

There are lots of people, audio engineers, and producers and media specialists that that's what they do. And they're going to be able to tell you, "Hey, when you say this, trim it down. Don't say it in so many big words, say it so that people can understand it and be a little happier when you say it." It's really unfortunate to have to give people notes like, "Hey, you need to smile more when you say that." And honestly, it has nothing to do with being on camera. I can't see you, but when I hear you, I know you're not smiling and I know you're not excited about this because I can hear it in your voice. If you smile when you record, I can hear it in your voice, you're excited about it. And that's going to keep me engaged. So little things like that, that people don't even think of, but don't be down and frowny when you talk. Smile and keep yourself up, and you'll actually bring some life to your content.

Mike:

This is it. This is storytelling 101, 202, 303, 404 right here. Oh, I love it. All right. We have a couple minutes left. We're going to fold the B&H team in just a second for any final questions. But I want to know, take me down the rabbit hole for audiobooks. I'm such an audiobook fan. I want to know some of your favorite stories real quick before we let you go. How are they made? I consume so many of them and I don't think I... I'm afraid that the reality is going to be so different than what I think it is, but I want to know what goes in the sausage.

Michael:

Well, I will say, I don't know that it's that different. But a lot of it is, when you have a professional voice actor, they are some of the best actors you will ever find, especially the ones that do audiobooks because it's really the only time you're ever going to find one actor playing 20 different characters in a single project and doing them all well.

Mike:

Yeah.

Michael:

It's a performance, just like anything else. It's just like when a musician comes into the studio or when an actor gets on stage or behind a camera for movie, it's the same thing. It's just that you don't have as much to worry about the visual aspect. But some of the best experiences I've had have been honestly with author reads because when it's somebody reading their own content, that comes across really well. And I've always said that my two favorite things to work on at this point are YA and stuff where you get a great professional voice actor that can tell a story like a pro and is great with their voices and is great with bringing out the characters. And also, those kind of nonfiction things where you get the author really just telling their story or talking about experiences that they've had, it's going to be more meaningful.

Michael:

I spent a week with 50 Cent working on his book Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter. And that was a lot of fun. He has a great business mind, and listening to him talk about the way he handles his business, the way he's regimented and the way he thinks, the way he plans everything out, you can hear how passionate about it he is. That's what he cares about.

Michael:

A few months ago, I actually had the benefit of working with Jon Taffer, which was a lot of fun, from Bar Rescue. And one of the things he was talking about in this book, the book was called The Power of Conflict. It was really cool to hear how Jon Taffer, for anyone that knows him, has that really in-your-face style, but that's very calculated. He's not just flying off the handle. He's specifically choosing his times to really raise the stakes and get animated about something. But it was so awesome to hear him talk about the stories that he's worked with, the people he's worked with from Bar Rescue. That he helped revive this business and five years later, he still hears from these people and stays in touch, and really not just wanted to get them running a good restaurant but actually wanted to help this person improve the way they manage, improve the way that they're working in their career and get better. Hearing those stories is so cool.

Michael:

I always love music and working with music, spending an overnight recording with Anderson .Paak and listening to him in The Free Nationals get to jam, that's unbelievable. But getting someone in the studio for an audiobook, spending a week with 50 Cent or with Jon Taffer or somebody like that and actually getting to be in conversation with them is great. One of the things that I always tell people, and they always get kind of surprised by this is, I can't listen to audiobooks when I'm not working. It's not because I don't like them and it's not because I don't enjoy the performance, it's because I missed the conversation. I have the rare ability to talk to the person that's reading me the story. When they're reading me this audiobook and something crazy happens and I didn't see it coming for this character, I can talk to them about it. But when I listen to the audiobook, I'm sitting there yelling at the person reading, and they don't say anything back to me. It's terrible. But it's a rare opportunity. Audiobook listening is a great solo activity. Audiobook recording is best done as a conversation.

Mike:

Michael, with that, I will finish it by saying, you might have the world's greatest job, at least from my daughter's perspective or any avid story devour. I love it. I could go on with this for hours. But before we say goodbye, I want to say a giant thank you to B&H for hosting us. Let's bring the B&H team back. I've been hogging and asking all the questions. Eric, Scott, Danny, if any of you got any questions for Michael?

Speaker 3:

I'm over here taking notes. I think I've changed my mic's position about six times in the last hours. So I'm in and out of paying attention and trying to be like, "All right, does this work? How does this sound?"

Speaker 3:

Now, this is really, really super valuable information. On behalf of the team here, I want to thank you both because this is stuff that not only do we put it out for our viewers, but we take it as a team. One of the things that we pride ourselves on is not only being a wealth of information for everybody, but constantly learning how we can be better. And we may work for an industry leader but look, behind the scenes, it's just people trying to make their own productions better. And we are all creatives outside of work. So Mike, we've talked about this, you see the overlap between work and personal, and it's stuff like this that not only helps us get better, but it inspires us.

Mike:

That's a mic drop right there.

Michael:

All we can hope for.

Mike:

Guys, thank you so much.

Michael:

Thank you, everyone.

Mike:

We'll be back in two weeks with another episode. And if you like the content that you're hearing today, please feel free to check out the Earthworks podcast, Amplitude, where we share even more stories just like this.

Michael:

Thanks so much, guys. This is great. I appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. Thanks to everyone from B&H.

Mike:

Can't wait until the next session. Thank you, everyone.

Speaker 3:

Yes. Thank you, guys.

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