Speaker 1: 37.1% of podcasters are recording their podcasts on Zoom. That's not good. I have Albin here from Buzzsprout to tell us why.

Speaker 2: Well, they compress your audio and they make editing an absolute nightmare.

Speaker 1: So in this video, we're going to show you step by step how you can make your audio files sound like what you're listening to right now. To this, doesn't this sound a lot better? Albin, does it sound better to you? It sounds so much better to me. I can't I couldn't handle the computer audio. OK, well, we're going to show you how to get here and even more. So stick around. First of all, if you're going to record a podcast on Zoom before we get into the settings and stuff like use a microphone, please. And there's many different kinds of microphones you can use that are great. I'll link to some in the description below. But having a microphone changes the sound from this to now this. As you can tell, it's obviously a lot better. It's not perfect yet. We'll tell you how to get there in just a sec. Still using Zoom, but in addition to a microphone, you might consider using headphones.

Speaker 2: Why, Albin? Because if I'm not getting the audio from Pat in my ears, then what's going to happen is they'll come out of the computer. We're going to get a ton of audio bleed. All of his audio will be coming into my recordings as well.

Speaker 1: So microphone, headphones, that's it for equipment. But let's dive into the settings of Zoom to make this audio that you're listening to right now even better. All right. So, Albin, I'm in Zoom right now, as everybody can see on the screen. We're here together. But let's make the audio sound great with the settings. So where do I go from here? What's first?

Speaker 2: All right. So when you pull up in Zoom, go ahead and click on the gear icon up in the top right. You're actually not going to see this, Pat, because you're inside of Zoom. So all of these happen inside the preference panel.

Speaker 1: Oh, OK, hold up. All right. I move the screen around. So you and I are stacked. And then on the right hand side, people are seeing the settings area. And I'm going to click on this gear icon and move that over there. OK, I see the settings now. Where do I go from here?

Speaker 2: All right. So the first thing we'll do is we're heading over to audio and we've all got our microphones and hopefully we've set them up. We want to make sure they're absolutely sure those are the input device. So next to test microphone, make sure that's the name of the microphone that you've hooked up.

Speaker 1: I'm noticing right here because we're doing this demo, it's still saying the MacBook Pro mic. OK, so I'm going to go to the Scarlett 2 and there we go. The input level is going and it should sound better just from selecting the right microphone. OK, so what's next?

Speaker 2: Massive improvement already. So, number one, let's turn on the option for original sound. And notice when we turn this on under music and professional audio, that this is just giving us the option in future meetings to turn this on. Do you see that, Pat?

Speaker 1: Oh, right here, music and professional audio show in meeting option to enable original sound. You want me to click that on? Go ahead and click that on.

Speaker 2: OK, it's on. Now turn on high fidelity music mode. Boom. And turn off echo cancellation.

Speaker 1: Turn off echo cancellation.

Speaker 2: OK, so since we have headphones, there isn't going to be that fear of having echo in the audio files, and so that's going to make it easier for our computers to handle a little bit higher quality audio. Nice. And then we're going to jump up a section to suppress background noise and turn that down to low. Faint background sound. Got it. All right. And now the tip that is going to make your audio editor love you is under recording. So over there on the left, go to recording and make sure we check record separate audio file for each participant.

Speaker 1: OK, I think somebody told me to record this once before, and so I have it clicked on, but most people I think by default have it off. So I'm going to click that on. And so that allows for the machines essentially to capture the best audio from just one single track, right? For each person, it'll be a little bit heavier of a file, I would imagine. But you want the best audio quality possible, right?

Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to end up with two audio files, one for you and one for me. The benefit is if I cough or somebody walks in the room, well, you can edit that audio out, especially if you were talking. That becomes totally unusable if maybe you were speaking, but there's noise on my side with two audio files. Now you can just remove that. I like it. I like it. OK, what's next? The next thing we've got to do is when we start our zoom reading, we just need to make sure that we are enabling that original sound audio. So up there in the top left of our zoom meeting, you should see something for original sound off. Do you see that? I do see that off. So let's go ahead and turn that on.

Speaker 1: So I'm going to hit original sound. Off, and then it says select a microphone to always use original sound. So obviously I want to pick my main microphone, right? Exactly. All right. There's a Scarlett 2i2 for myself. And OK, so we're recording. You're hearing this is it, right? These are all the settings to make sure. Now, does that original sound on thing change every time I get into a new zoom meeting and would there be any reason to turn that off?

Speaker 2: The reason to turn it off is for somebody who's only using zoom for maybe a conversation, but it's not for a recording. Anytime you're recording and you've got enough bandwidth, make sure you have that on. OK.

Speaker 1: So you're listening to the audio right now between Albin and I at the highest fidelity possible currently from zoom. We're still using zoom. I'm not using any of the sort of mic capture that's happening for the editing purposes. You're hearing zoom right now. So how does this compare to what you heard before? Let's go back and listen to what it sounded like. If you're going to record a podcast on zoom before we get into the settings and stuff like use a microphone, please. And then here we are now. So Albin, as a guest, is there anything that you need to do specific to have your audio be as great as possible? Is this something we have to teach our guests how to do as well?

Speaker 2: The things you want to focus on with your guests are totally different than settings. So it's we want to make sure they're in a quiet environment. It's few interruptions as we can have the better actually having a microphone and using good mic technique. So four fingers away from my microphone and staying consistent and then having them use headphones. Headphones are really, really important because we don't want your audio to bleed back into my microphone. But if we can get them to do those few things, we're going to see drastic improvements in the audio from both sides.

Speaker 1: Now, zoom can only do so much. I mean, the things we've talked about here are going to help your zoom audio file sound a lot better, obviously. And you see that here, but it's not fully optimized yet. Actually, there's another thing we can do, right, Albin, to have the audio sound even better. What would that be?

Speaker 2: If you want your audio to sound perfect and you want the video to be even better, there is one zoom setting you've got to use. Go to the top left of your page, and I want you to click this red circle with an X and end meeting because it's not in zoom. It's going to be over with our friends. It's Squadcast. So I think we've got to jump over to Squadcast and try to record this meeting the right way. Dude, that was harsh, but OK. All right.

Speaker 1: And look at us. We are here at Squadcast. Now I'm going to hit record to record this file. And this is the best way to capture the best, not just audio, but also video. If you're going to be doing video podcasts to way better than than zoom. So let's cut to the actual interview and what it looks like. So you can see the quality on the opposite end. And while we're here, Albin, tell us about why you love Squadcast so much.

Speaker 2: Well, with Zoom, we're always at the mercy of our Internet bandwidth, right? We did everything right. We set up every all the preferences. But if your Internet flakes out, you're out of luck. With Squadcast, all the audio files are being saved remote or locally to your own computer. So my files are on my computer. Your files aren't yours. This is for happening for audio and video. We're not at the mercy of sending this compressed file over the Internet. Instead, we have our conversation. It's all recorded. And after it uploads and we get the complete files that are going to be so much better. So the quality of Zoom can just never match what we could get with something like Squadcast.

Speaker 1: They're almost kind of like the raw files being recorded that we can then use in our editor and our video editor. Or we could do whatever we want with them, create really cool social media messages with them as well. It's just really high quality. But what I also love is they also do backups as well. So, you know, full disclosure, I am an advisor to the company and an affiliate. I'll have my affiliate link on the screen now in case you want to check out Squadcast and in the description below, too. And obviously, big shout out and thank you to Albin here from Buzzsprout. If you are going to be hosting a podcast anywhere, you'll want to be hosting it on Buzzsprout. You can check out the link on the screen right now and in the description below, too. Albin, any final tips for anybody recording podcast remotely to get the best version of that conversation?

Speaker 2: The best tips are to get all this out of the way so that when you're recording your podcast, you're not stressed out about it. You don't want to have the Internet drop off in the middle and be terrified that you've lost this one chance at a big interview. So get all this set up, do a test recording, and then you'll have the confidence to focus on your audience and your guest rather than all the tech during the interview.

Speaker 1: That's right. Perfect way to end the video. Thank you all so much. Appreciate you. Make sure you hit subscribe and check out Buzzsprout and Squadcast and the links are down below. Thank you so much.