Podcast editing is more than one thing. It’s not only about cutting out umms. It’s not only about making cuts. Podcast editing is the entire post-production process; cleaning up the audio, setting levels, mixing, editing, and mastering.
What makes it challenging when you’re trying to learn how to edit podcasts is that there isn’t much content that takes you through the whole journey. Most of what’s out there is Podcast Editing 101 stuff companies put out to lead you to their product. Have you noticed podcast hosts and remote recording platforms put out most of the “how to edit a podcast” videos and articles? There aren’t a lot of podcast editors who are actively producing content aimed at helping editors develop their skills.
When I’ve worked with people, whether they were coaching clients or community members, most of them have been self-taught. Im all for self-teaching since I’m a mostly self-taught audio engineer. I don’t have any schooling or professional training, only a passion for music and sound that has turned into a 25-year dive into sound. The problem with self-teaching is that we rely on the quality of the training materials available to us.
When it comes to learning podcast editing, there isn’t much high-quality, solid information out there. This leads you to YouTube, Google, and social media to learn, or you learn by trial and error. Trial and error has its own set of complications, like slowing down growth, because you only learn when you run into a problem. Turning to the internet can help but can also send you down the wrong path. YouTube is filled with many well-intentioned people who don’t really know what they’re talking about but sound like experts. I worked with one client who learned through YouTube and worked with another coach. He came to me wanting to level up his audio quality and process. When we looked at his process, one thing really jumped out at me: the processing chain. His first plugin on each track was a gain plugin, followed by a de-clipper plugin. He had de-clippers. Two or three per track plus another one or two on the mix bus. Plus there was a limiter on each track that was completely unnecessary.
This resulted from learning that he had to make the audio louder, but figuring out a way to do it or finding a video that showed how to use the gain plugin to make them louder. The result was a lot of unnecessary processing, some of which resulted in episodes that had some audible distortion or saturation. There was a bit of hesitation in changing his process so drastically, to the point that he had actually asked on social media if my proposed process made sense. He tried the new process and was surprised by how much cleaner everything sounded. On top of that, he found the new process saved him a lot of time.
All of this to say that teaching yourself how to edit podcasts could be costing you a lot of time while not producing the best results you can. This is why I created Podcast Editing School. It gives you a safe space to learn podcast editing. You get access to our self-paced Podcast Editing Level Up course and a community where you can get your questions answered and stay up to date with the latest tools and trends. There’s nowhere else where you can get this type of mentorship. If there’s one shortcut to learning, it’s having a good mentor to help guide you.
To glimpse how a podcast editor works, I recorded myself as I edited a community video from beginning to end, providing commentary as I go. I explain what I’m doing, why I’m doing it, and my thinking as I’m doing it. You'll see me using Hindenburg 2 and some of the things I think make it the best DAW for podcast editing. I show you the plugins I use that save me time when mixing the podcast, like Supertone Clear, and Sonible smart:Plugins. You don’t see many videos that give you such a full, behind-the-scenes view of the process. Too many podcast editors want to hide the process as trade secrets out of sort sort of fear. If you’ve checked out my YouTube channel, you know I’m trying to help podcasters and podcast editors develop their audio skills.