Speaker 1: Hey everybody, I see a lot of talk online about the issues people have had when recording remote interviews online using this platform or that one. I work as a remote recording engineer for my clients as well as Podfly, and in my capacity doing that, I've been involved in well over a hundred recording sessions, working with hundreds of different setups, situations, and in this video I'm sharing my insights and advice to getting the best results with your chosen platform. Let's start with my first recommendation. There's nothing that can derail an interview faster than troubleshooting right before you start recording. If possible, schedule a pre-call with the guest beforehand. This gives you an opportunity to chat about what to expect. It gives you an opportunity to make sure there's no technical problems getting into the studio, and you get to do a sound check to make sure everything's working. You'll want to conduct a 30-second test recording to ensure that there are no problems recording or uploading the files. The most common issue I run into relates to the computer or the device that's being used. This is the biggest wildcard when conducting remote interviews. It's the part that most people tend to overlook. There are so many variables here that some systems will be problematic while others run perfectly. So let's look at some of the system issues. The most obvious is the device that we're using, the computer or cell phone, tablet, whatever the guest has. So be aware of the minimum specs for the platform you're using to record. I recommend having this page bookmarked for easy reference in case you need to troubleshoot. Some platforms only work with Chrome or Chromium-based browsers, like Microsoft Edge, while other platforms support other browsers, so it's good to know what your platform supports. And check for mobile and tablet compatibility, because this can be a little bit limited. Firewalls, VPNs, security plugins, and pop-up blockers can cause problems with recording locally, so disable these for this session if there are any issues during the test recording. This can be especially true when someone is using an IT-controlled computer, but anyone who has security plugins or is using a VPN can run into some issues here. And the biggest piece of advice I can give is to make sure everybody is rebooting their computer or their device immediately before joining the studio. This eliminates most problems before they even become problems. The next thing to take into consideration is their internet connection. It's recommended to connect directly to the modem via Ethernet, but Wi-Fi should suffice in most situations these days. Upload, download, and latency speeds are important and can have a big impact on the overall experience during the recording. Generally, an upload speed of 5 megabits per second is recommended for video. If they are freezing during the interview, try having that person turn their computer off in the platform to save bandwidth. And latency can cause some lag issues, but that's one of those elements we don't really have a whole lot of control over. Another important factor that comes into play for audio quality is the space the person is recording in. When you're talking to the person, ask them to choose a quiet room. Ideally, this would be one without a lot of reverberant acoustics. One way to test this is to go into various rooms and clap. Listen to the difference between a clothing closet and your bathroom. You're looking for something that sounds more like the closet, and what you're listening for is the amount of echo or reverb right after you clap. You're going to hear a noticeable difference in some rooms versus others. This tells you how lively a room is going to sound, and we're looking for rooms that have a dead sound. There are ways to treat a room with poor acoustics, but that does go beyond the scope of this video. Let's look at our platform-specific settings for a minute. The number one thing that kills audio on these platforms is echo cancellation. So headphones, earbuds, whatever, those are the most important element to high-quality audio. So we should encourage everybody to use headphones. I've worked with a number of shows that will not have guests that do not use headphones, because it does have such an impact on the audio quality. I know Riverside handles the echo cancellation settings automatically for everybody, but just in case you're using a platform that doesn't, you want to turn on echo cancellation for anybody that's not using headphones, earbuds, AirPods. In other words, anyone that is using speakers to hear the conversation, they need to have echo cancellation turned on. Anybody that's using headphones or earbuds, something similar, they should have echo cancellation turned off. And if your platform has a setting to turn on or off noise reduction or noise suppression, I recommend turning these off for the highest-quality recordings. The next thing that I want to talk about is the sound check. Whether we're doing this before the call or during a pre-call-type meeting, the procedure is going to be the same. Let's start with the most obvious, and that's the mic. There's a handful of different types of mics our guests will be using. AirPods or some other type of Bluetooth headset-microphone combo. Avoid these whenever possible. They are prone to dropouts and low-quality audio. Earbuds. These are a step above AirPods. The big thing to keep in mind with earbuds is they have a cable that will rustle against clothing. We want to have the person hold that cable in their hand at least a couple of inches away from their body to eliminate those distracting sounds. If the person has long hair, ask them to pull it into a ponytail and keep it behind their shoulders to prevent the hair from rustling against the mic. Next up, we have laptops. Newer laptops tend to have better mics, but we need to beware of fan noise. Whenever possible, the laptop should be plugged into a power supply. The next type of mic we might run into is the headset. If the mic element on the headset can be positioned, position it towards the side of the mouth. You don't want it under the nose or directly in front of the mouth. If it's right under the nose, you're going to get a lot of breathing sounds, and if it's right in front of the mouth, you're probably going to pick up a lot of breathing sounds as well as plosives, popping P-type sounds. And then we have your typical standalone mics. There's condenser mics like the Blue Yeti, and then we have dynamic mics like the Samsung Q2U, Audio-Technica ATR2100X, the Shure SM7B. Regardless of the type of mic that they're using, the first thing we want to do is to make sure that the correct mic is chosen. Some platforms like Riverside make it easy for me to see which mic is selected. Even if your platform does do this, I recommend doing a scratch test just to make sure you are hearing somebody through the actual mic. That's what it sounds like. You have the person scratch the face of their microphone, and you should hear that very direct sound. If it sounds kind of distant, you know you're hearing stuff from the laptop mic still. When it comes to positioning the mic, we want the mic to be close to the mouth. When we have it close to the mouth, we get a more direct sound. I'll demonstrate. So here I've got the mic about two inches away from my mouth. As we move it away, you can hear how much more distant I sound, and it changes the audio quality quite a bit. So with dynamic mics, we want the mic to be about two to four inches from the mouth. Condensers, they're a little more sensitive, so we can get away with four to ten inches. But again, the further away they are, the more distant the person's voice is going to sound. And the other reason to have the mic closer is, along with that more direct sound, we capture less of the room sound. And the mic should be positioned off-axis, pointed towards the mouth. The person should be talking past the microphone rather than directly into it. So let me demonstrate with my little mic. We don't want it directly in front of them like this, or we'll get plosives and probably more breathing sounds. So what we'll want to do is move it off-axis about 45 degrees, pointed towards the mouth. This way we're not talking directly into it, but we're still capturing enough of the sound of the voice to get a really good recording. And when we set up the mic, we want to make sure we're positioning it with the guest or participant sitting in a comfortable way. We don't want them really stiff, like a board, leaning forward, or slouched really uncomfortably way away from it. We want them sitting in a comfortable way, because they're going to be here for 45-60 minutes. We want the mic positioned in a way that is going to allow them to be comfortable for those 45-60 minutes. Some other things that can be helpful when positioning the mic, you can use some books or boxes to raise the mic stand or the laptop up so it's in a much better position. Doesn't matter how good it looks as long as we're getting the mic into the right position. So now that we've got the mic positioned well, the next step is we want to check the sound levels. We want to make sure everything sounds good, that everything is, the gain for the mic is set well. And this is where it starts to get a little more tricky, because now we're having to help people set up their microphones that, let's be honest, a lot of guests have microphones but they don't know how to work with them, they don't know how to adjust the gain, or even what a good gain level would be. So knowing how to walk others through the process of adjusting the gain is really important. I personally use the manual for the Audio-Technica ATR2100X because I found it to be a really good, easy-to-follow resource for working with people on PCs, since I'm a Mac user. For PC users out there that aren't familiar with Macs, it has good walkthroughs on how to set everything up for the Mac users. It's just a really good reference. So I've downloaded it to my computer and I have a shortcut set up so if I'm in that situation I can open up the document quickly and be able to walk the guests through setting up their equipment. When it comes to setting the gain levels, we're looking for that Goldilocks setting. Not too quiet and not too loud. Too quiet and you're going to have a lot more noise when you boost it up in post-production. Too loud and it's going to be distorted. In Riverside, I'll use the level meter to set the levels. So in this example, you can see my audio levels over here in the right. When I'm talking, you should see my voice triggering the audio levels in the green. We don't want it so that as I'm talking it barely triggers anything in the green. If it comes up like this, it's going to be too quiet. But if I'm coming in really loud, and I'm not going to be able to trigger that because I just, I don't have a really loud voice. But if you start seeing the levels get into the yellow, we might need to adjust the gain down a little bit. Coming into the yellow when somebody's laughing or speaking a little more loudly, that's okay. Basically, we just want to make sure that we aren't clipping the main recording. But if you're unsure, err on the side of being a little too quiet rather than being a little too loud. If you aren't seeing green, the gain is too low, the mic is too far away, or the person is talking into the wrong part of the mic. Some mics, like the Yeti, you talk into the front of. Other mics, like the one I'm using here, the RE-20, you talk into the end of the mic. So it's important to know kind of what that sounds like when someone's talking into the wrong side of the mic. Like we talked about earlier, it's going to sound a little more distant and not quite as upfront. You might hear more of the room. So pay attention when you're listening to them talk during the soundcheck because these little things can clue us into the mic being spoken into in the wrong part. And one other thing to kind of keep in mind is even if you've got the levels set really well during the soundcheck, it's not uncommon for people to start talking a little bit louder once you hit record. So don't worry about stopping things early on to readjust levels. The last thing you want is to record an entire episode where the audio is clipped because you didn't want to stop early on to readjust those levels. Now that we've talked about the soundcheck, we've talked about the computer, let's go over a general pre-recording checklist. So let's start with the devices. Make sure everybody's been rebooted. If needed, disable security plugins. Turn off or mute notifications on phones and computers. Ask everybody to close any open windows in their room. Close doors if there's potential for intrusive noise like others that live in the space, pets, etc. Fans should be turned off. Pre-recording fans are usually okay, but some fans do have chains that will cause clinking clanking type sounds. So do be aware of that. The next part of the pre-recording checklist is about the sound. So remind everybody about mic technique. You don't want to be moving around side to side to fore and back as you record because it messes with the consistency of the sound. While they are in a familiar setting, like their home, office, wherever it is that they're recording, they are also in a recording studio right now. The mic will record all of the sounds in the room, including typing on your keyboard, tapping on your desk, clicking a pen, pets that might be in the room barking, meowing, chirping. But most of all, remind them to relax and have fun. If you are editing the episode, let them know that and provide any direction they might need. For example, we edit this podcast, so don't worry about making mistakes. It's okay if you lose your thought or need to restart or restate something. If you need a restart for any reason, just take a pause and restart from the beginning of the sentence. This will make it a lot easier for us to make edits as we're editing. And the last thing before getting started is just to ask if anybody has any questions before starting. If they don't have any questions, go ahead and press record. Spend a couple of minutes talking to the guest, trying to get them to forget that you've pressed Get them to relax a little bit. Talk about where you want to go in the conversation. The more relaxed the guest is when you get into the conversation, the better the results are going to be. I hope you have found this video helpful, and I'll talk to you all next time.