I recently came across two cool features on Audacity which helped me improve my podcast episodes.
FEATURE 1:
One is to amplify or normalize loudness of the recorded audio. If I have to reduce or increase my audio setting in my phone while listening to audio for songs or podcasts it irritates me. I wanted to not put my podcasts listeners through the same trouble and I came across LUFS.
LUFS!?! What?
“Loudness, K-weighted, relative to full scale (LKFS) is a standard loudness measurement unit used for audio normalization in broadcast television systems and other video and music streaming services“
I use Spotify for Podcasters to upload and put together audio episodes and they recommend a target LUFS of -14.
The nice thing is that Audacity supports Loudness Normalization as a standard feature. Just read the article on LUFS on the Audacity website and you have an audio normalized just right for Spotify (Loudness Normalization – Audacity Manual (audacityteam.org)).
FEATURE 2:
Second feature is to truncate silence when it is too long. I sometimes have a video episode that I convert to audio. A long pause in video works with visual input but does not in audio when the user is only listening and has no visual input.
The Audacity feature to truncate silence (Truncate Silence – Audacity Manual (audacityteam.org)) when it is too long really helps. I identified silent blocks longer that 1.5 seconds and reduced them to 1 second and you notice that it flows better for audio.
Links:
Ranjith Venkatesh Podcast on Google Podcasts: Ranjith Venkatesh @ Moss and Lichens (google.com)
Ranjith Venkatesh Podcast on Spotify Podcasts: Ranjith Venkatesh @ Moss and Lichens | Podcast on Spotify
Spotify for Podcasters: https://podcasters.spotify.com/