Choose the room
Record in a small room with soft surfaces: curtains, a sofa, a carpet, a wardrobe full of clothes. Empty rooms with hard walls add echo, and echo is the hardest thing to remove without making a voice sound processed.
Switch off fans, air conditioning and notifications, and close windows to street noise.
Use a close microphone
A USB microphone or a headset microphone close to the mouth beats an expensive microphone across the room. Keep it about a hand’s width from your mouth, slightly to one side so breath does not hit it.
Laptop microphones pick up the whole room, so use them only when nothing else is available.
Record one track per person
If your call or recording tool can save a separate file for each participant, turn that on. Separate tracks let the editor level each voice and cut one person’s cough without touching the others.
If it can only save one mixed file, send that and say so in your notes.
Everyone wears headphones
Without headphones the other person’s voice leaks from your speakers into your microphone and comes back as an echo. Wired headphones are best. Bluetooth headsets can lower the quality of the microphone sound.
Test before you record
Two minutes of testing saves an episode.
- Record thirty seconds and play it back on headphones.
- Check that the level is strong but never reaches the top of the meter.
- Ask each person to say their name, so the editor can tell the tracks apart.
- Stay silent for ten seconds, so the editor has a sample of the room.
During the recording
Small habits make the edit shorter.
- Leave a short gap before answering so voices do not overlap.
- Avoid tapping the table, shuffling papers or typing.
- If something goes wrong, pause, say what happened and repeat the sentence. The editor will keep the best take.
- Keep each person at the same distance from the microphone all the way through.
What to send with the files
Send the original files, not compressed copies, and add notes: how names and products are pronounced, passages to cut and where the episode starts and ends. What an edit covers lists what we do with them.