Editing Audacity

Whether you are a veteran podcaster or an aspiring podcaster, you know that producing a high-quality show is essential to growing your subscribers. Nothing is worse than recording riveting content and then publishing poorly edited or substandard audio. Ultimately, this distracts listeners from your intended vision and tarnish your podcast's reputation. 

Luckily Audacity, an open-source digital audio editor and recording application is available for macOS and Windows for FREE. Audacity can aid in creating a professional final audio output that your listeners will engage with eagerly.

Editing Audacity 2

As you edit your podcasts in Audacity, be sure to take the proper steps to achieve clean and clear audio. Here's our list of a few standard tools and techniques essential to editing podcasts: 

  1. Compression: Using compression helps prepare your podcast audio so that the range of sounds from quiet to loud is an enjoyable experience for your audience.
  2. Noise Reduction: Eliminate unwanted noises recorded during your podcast with noise reduction. However, remember to try and record pristine audio during the production phase. This is imperative because, depending on how prevalent the unwanted noises are, you may be unable to remove all undesired sounds from your recording.
  3. Mix Your Audio: After you edited your podcast, create a final audio mix. Audio mixing involves overall adjustments to ensure that your audio levels remain consistent throughout your project's duration and that your audio never dips.

To learn more about editing with Audacity, check out MNN's upcoming Editing Podcasts Using Audacity course on Saturday, September 26, 2020 from 10 am - 4pm. To learn how you can become involved with Manhattan Neighborhood Network, visit www.mnn.org/learn.