Perfecting a “Quiet Room” for your Show or Podcast - Ep 39

Well, welcome. Thank you for joining me tonight on the Podcast Tips program. I appreciate you being here and spending time with me tonight in your evening, uh, if you're on the East Coast. If you're on the West Coast, then I guess you're just entering your evening. And but either way, thank you for joining me here. Well, what I wanted to talk about tonight on the show is something I— a concept that I had recently heard about, and something that I guess I hadn't put a term to, which is this concept of creating a quiet room for podcasting. And so I guess it's intuitive when you really think about it that all of us want to create a really terrific sounding and appealing kind of recording environment or show production kind of environment for the show. And so I thought this would be an interesting topic for, for me to talk about tonight and to kind of express some converging trends that I'm seeing in the podcasting space and how that may translate into you creating like maybe a podcast that maybe more aligns with who you are as a person and as a personality and also your, your style preferences. And also just elevating your podcast to another level of what is subjectively known as quality, right? And I've done an episode on this quality issue and what a show is and what a podcast is and those kind of things. And I think this is kind of a natural evolution of this conversation as we've seen kind of the industry move towards kind of professionalization. And but yet there's this kind of very grassroots nature that had really originated from the podcast medium going way, way back to the early days of the medium. And when I started, I could care less about video and how things looked and all those kinds of things. But, but I think what we're entering— and I'm going to show you some examples of this in some photographs and things like that— but, um, I've kind of probably not fully embraced this trend that I'm seeing on the video side of creating kind of more what may be considered to be kind of a little bit more traditional kind of television production type of experiences with a video podcast. And where this show is very much, you know, I have an office studio, I've decked it out with studio lights, I've got a nice camera. Uh, it's actually a camcorder, it's not a DSLR, which is more common these days. Um, but when I bought this, there— all of the, the DSLRs, uh, or the regular kind of snap and shoot kind of cameras that also have video ability, um, they were pretty much all sold out in all the stores. So really the only option I had was to get a high-end camcorder. So I bought a Sony camera, which gave me a larger lens. It gave me more of an aperture to capture more light, which also gave me the ability to have deeper colors in the video and to just offer a better quality video experience. And I think that that is part of this topic of a quiet room, right? But a quiet room, that term implies multiple things to me as I think about it. It really implies kind of a room that sounds great, doesn't have echo, doesn't have any kind of reverberation in the room, kind of back audio that comes back at the microphone, and those kind of things that create kind of a less than audio experience. And so what I strive for in this program is to do as high a quality production as I can, but yet also, you know, be able to do it in a simple way and have it at my office desk, which is a very large desk. It's actually a dining room table is what it is. So it's really large. And as you'll see in the photograph, I'm going to pull up on the screen here so you can see what that looks like. So that's my— that's the desk that I'm doing tonight's episode with. I, I just took a picture of it before I started live streaming, and so I wanted to share that with you just to give you an idea of what I'm looking at when I'm doing this show. At the top of the, the monitor there, you can see in the lower part, if you're watching the video portion of this— now granted, if you're listening to the audio of this you're not going to be able to get as much of a feel, but I can describe it a little bit. So I have 3 large monitors in that picture. So I have one that's right in front of me, and then I have one off to the left which is running off of a second computer that I have that's not currently operating right this minute. And then the, the upper one that, that I have up, up towards the, uh, the top up there— I guess it's actually right up here is actually a kind of like a TV monitor that I can watch YouTube videos and I can do something. I could certainly turn into something, but this kind of gives you an idea. And then I have the, the studio lights at the very top up there that you can see, the, the bright lights. There's 3 of them up there. There, there are 3 panel lights that are shining kind of down on me and then also into the background, so it lights up the back wall behind me But I did build this, this kind of office to, to kind of, like I say, kind of be a good kind of versatile space for me as I work and as I do calls and as I do other, other activities in this room as well. I mean, I can just do regular Zoom calls in here and I get praise for my background because a lot of people don't have this kind of background. And I actually built and bought these bookshelves. Behind me to actually be useful for this and to add like LED lights along the outer frame and the internal frame of the backside of each of the bookshelves behind me, and then put panel, panel kind of sound buffering square tiles on the wall. You can kind of see that behind me, and then I can also show a a picture of that as well. So you can kind of see the tiles that I have behind me. But the bigger thing of what I was trying to do here is I was trying to create an attractive kind of recording environment, but also have a quiet recording environment, one that didn't have echo. I've got carpet on the floors. I also have— and then another little thing is that light that you're seeing, it's like a multi bulb light that you're seeing in the photograph actually helps light up the back wall, which creates a little bit of a deeper kind of, I guess, a lighting situation that you can apply to your background that helps kind of accent it. Now, if I turn that off or I turn off my backlights, you know, my colored lights, the green lights that are behind me, it creates a whole different other kind of feel for the show. It actually creates me as kind of like a highlight here. And then, but the background in this experience is much more kind of blended with what's perceived as a real-world environment. And so if I go in here and I'll go in and I'll show you another part of the room too, it's kind of off to my right-hand side. So, this side over here has a large picture on the wall. And as you can see, I have a window, and then I also have a thick kind of cellular blind that pulls down over the window that is sound buffering as well. So that's a big thing that people talk about is if you have big windows in your room, if you have like hardwood floor, if you have tile on your floor, and nothing on the walls, you can have echo problems, which won't help you have what is termed a quiet room, right? And it also— the other piece to this too is not using a condenser microphone really at all ever in podcasting. I started out back when I started out in the early days of doing my nationally syndicated radio show that I did for many years, it was done with a $600 or $700 Audio-Technica professional condenser microphone, because back then I didn't know any better. And people were praising how it was amazing to have these really, really high-quality microphones and things like that that sounded terrific. And I have to say, those Audio-Technica condenser microphones, the real high-end ones, they sound terrific. I mean, I can't— there's really no way to replace the sound with a dynamic microphone like what I'm using right now. So this is an SM7B from Shure. I've had this mic since about 2008, 2009 timeframe. And so it's a very long-lasting microphone. It's turned out to be the most popular microphone, I think, in podcasting now. When— back when I bought it though, the only people that really used these microphones were musicians and radio stations. It was expensive back then. People just didn't really appreciate it. It was big and bulky and those kind of things. But now it's like the standard in the industry right now. So what I wanted to move to next here is— this concept of kind of creating a really terrific recording environment, right, that feels comfortable, feels warm, has soft kind of experiences in it. And one of the things that I wanted to mention, and this whole soundproofing thing that people talk a lot about, door seals and covering the windows and all stuff like that, you can really go wild on that stuff, right? So here, let me pull up on, on the screen. So what I'm showing you here, and you may find this rather amusing, but the person in the picture here that is recording his podcast is Ira Glass, um, the This American Life host that's probably one of the most famous radio, public radio hosts and podcasters. In the world. Look where he does some of his audio recordings is in a clothes closet. So, you know, some of these things, you know, I talk about it often in some of the podcasts that I do and what people do. You would be shocked at how many people in the podcast industry record their podcast, not every time they do, but on occasion, They will record, and some of them do it in every episode, in a closed closet. Some of the closed closets are bigger than others. This appears that Ira Glass is using here is rather small. A lot of them are like walk-in closets, things like that, that have a lot of clothes around them. As you can see, he's actually recording into clothes that are hanging right in front of him. And what that is is a terrific sound buffer. Back when I started I, um, this was back in the early 2000s. I, I rented an office in an office building to do my radio show, and I was offering services. It was called Loudvox back in those days. And I, I built a little enclosure in an office space that was made out of wood doors, hollow wood doors from like Home Depot. And then I hung shipping blankets over the doors to create a sound-buffered room for the recording, because back then I was using, like I told you before, I was using condenser microphones. And so I had to sound buffer my room as much as I could to get good audio. Now it's not so much important to do as extensive of this as what was required with the condenser microphone. So most people in podcasting today are using a dynamic microphone, which is what this microphone is. And what this microphone is oftentimes not known about is that it has massive what's called rear rejection, which means that typically if you're using a microphone like this, right, and you're speaking into it and you have a large monitor in front of you, kind of like what I had in my picture that I shared with you a second ago, was this shot here. Let me pull that up again so you can visualize this. It's actually— what happened to it? Yeah, here it is. Let me add it to— so as you can see, I have the microphone boom right here. And if you can see in the image, if I swing the microphone to be right in front of me, which oftentimes a podcaster will do, then I'm speaking into a large monitor. And what we have sometimes is what's called kind of a bounce back of the audio that bounces back, and it can create a little bit of an echo on your recording. And this is what the SM7B does a great job, is that it rejects audio that comes back at it. So if I'm speaking into a monitor, that audio is not going to bounce back at me, right, and create a poor audio quality. But as I'm doing video, I definitely— and more and more even with audio podcasters— I recommend side speaking into the microphone, right? So you don't get in this situation where there's what's called plosives, or speaking into the mic with the air coming out of your mouth. So yeah, to give you an example, it'd be like, see, this mic doesn't really do that because I have this foam pad on here, which actually keeps me in this particular microphone. The diaphragm is set back quite a bit from the edge here. So you're really not going to have an issue with plosives with this particular microphone, where some of the other microphones, the handhelds and things things like that, if you get too close and you breathe into them as you speak, they can create what's called plosives, which is like a wind noise in the audio. So these are things, these are kind of like minor kind of detail stuff, but it does get back to, you know, I would imagine Ira is probably more than likely possibly using a condenser mic there because I know that NPR is very, very concerned about audio quality. And if they're going to get terrific audio quality, they have to use probably condenser mics. And so he has to be very conscious of the environment that he's in, and doing it in a closet may be the only way he can really maintain that quality. So the next thing I wanted to share with you here is the other types of environments that I was actually talking about earlier. Let me see, do I have that? Yeah, I guess it's part of this. Let me scroll through this and okay, get to the next picture. So this is kind of an example of the trends that we're seeing in podcasting today. And if you're listening to this, what I'm showing on the screen is basically a really kind of more homey kind of looking place to record, right? It's got a couch and a chair. Some recording studios have multiple couches or just multiple chairs, and I can actually show that in the next one here. So, and it may be a little hard to see because it is a little small, but it's really pictures of what increasingly I'm seeing on YouTube that video podcasters are doing is that they're taking advantage of furniture, right? And they're getting the camera back or they're creating multi-camera shoots where they have like maybe 3 or 4 cameras that they can switch to as each person is talking, or they just record everything and they do the switching in post-production. So they're, but it is possible now to get like an ATEM Mini that has the ability to switch up to, I believe it's like 4 cameras. So you can actually switch between them as the conversation is actually happening. And then there's boom mics that sit in between each of the guests. As you can see down below down here, there's, um, that's, that's the kind of, kind of quiet room type of thing. And as you can see in even the prior, um, one that I showed you, there's sound panelings on the wall, there's things that they put on the wall to help buffer the sound, right? And as you can see in this picture, there's lots of things. There's carpet, throw rug on the floor, there's, you know, what looks like kind of like a pull blind on one side, and in the other picture has like plants that are around the guests that can maybe sound buffer the room and pictures on the wall and things like that. So you have kind of these different environments that you can create with, with kind of doing things maybe quite differently than, than how a traditional podcast has been thought about and conceived. And I do think this emphasis that has been pushing more towards video is actually getting people to do this. And I know that some of the really big podcasters out there will, you know, like a Russell Brand or a Tucker Carlson or anybody out there that's doing this stuff now, will actually build a studio. They'll build just, you in their own style and they will have all the same things that maybe they did when they were on broadcast television. And so you see this trend that's going on and this is where the bifurcation, I would think, of the industry is that there's podcasts that are gonna be highly professionally produced as podcasting starts to, and video, online video, really starts to replace mainstream media, we're going to— we're, we're seeing increased pressure being driven based on these higher production qualities. I guess the ability to switch cameras and stuff where, like, in this show I don't really take advantage of camera switching. I could. I do have a second camera, but I would really need to get like an ATEM Mini or something like that where I could easily switch between cameras really quickly and, and not have to go through a hassle of actually doing that. So, so that's, that's kind of what I wanted to talk about as far as on, on the kind of the, the experience of what's in a recording studio for a podcast. Um, and I don't recommend, you know, some people will use like pop filters and things like that, and I'd mentioned that before, and And I don't necessarily recommend that. I think we've moved to a time where pop filters, and that would be like a fabric screen or a metal screen that sits between you speaking and the microphone. I don't think we need to do that as much anymore. I think people just need to do this side kind of speech to the microphone. So any kind of air that comes out of your mouth kind of goes straight and not into the microphone. But under these circumstances, you kind of have to maybe have your gain turned up a little bit so you don't keep, you know, you don't miss some of the audio. And occasionally people like to move their heads around a lot, like they'll turn to one side or the other. That's why it's really important to kind of find your sweet spot right here. And so you can move your face around and your head around and and the audio quality doesn't dip that much. So I think it's really important too, and I've struggled with this too, is as you could see in my studio setup, I've got a— right above the monitor, I think I mentioned that before, there's a teleprompter there. And so that is also available to people to use too. That, um, that can sit behind your camera. So my, my video camera sits behind that box that you're seeing right above my, my monitor. So that's, that's where this video— and then you, and you have to adjust the, the zoom or whatever because that camcorder I have has, has a pretty heavy zoom capability. Um, so that does give you some flexibility. That's one of the problems with some of the webcams that a lot of people use is that they don't have the ability really too much to zoom in and out and to still get good video quality when you do that, because it's oftentimes what's called a digital zoom, which isn't really all that, all that good quality. So it's kind of similar to what you would find if you were trying to zoom in and out with your, you know, your mobile phone and trying to do a quality production for video. On your mobile phone. So that is kind of where that is coming into play here. And I think it's an interest or a good thing to kind of consider as you're trying to get your podcast kind of designed and what you want to do. And then one other piece of this too is that as you saw in the picture too, off to the right, I have a RODECaster mixer. And so some of the things in that that I need to talk about too is that device has a big impact on quality too, because inside of that monitor or mixer is a bunch of sound compression, normalization, and noise filtering technology that's built into that. RodeCaster Pro, and that may be helpful to people in different recording environments to be able to create a quality recording and in challenging environments. I mean, even myself with all this sound paneling and all of the carpet and how I've addressed things, and I have so much stuff in the room, like those boxes behind me are actually very helpful in diffusing the audio echo that can come back from a wall, right? And oftentimes, actually, in my older studio that I had, I had to put sound— large sound panels all the way around the upper corners of my ceiling, going all the way around and then down behind me, and just to be able to keep the echo down. And so that's also really, really important to think about what your environment is. When you walk into a room that you're thinking about doing a podcast in, and I know there's technology out there like the Neumann is a device that you can use that will remove that background noise. And like I was telling you about the RODECaster Pro, it has that ability too to remove errant sound, echo in the room. And the technology with AI is getting better. I also have these sound panels that I can put up on my wall. These aren't really thick, but they are kind of like equivalent to putting a picture on the wall. So, and they come in different colors and I can scatter these around and you can pick these things up at, Amazon and things like that for fairly inexpensive. These, these square sound panels that I have on the wall, that they just kind of stick to the wall and they're, they're very easy to, to pull off and remove. So if you need to do that, um, it's— and to reset your studio, do something different with your studio, you can certainly do that. And it's also possible to, um, to do things like, um Here, let me pull up, let's see here, what's the platform that I'm on also uses like a virtual background. So let me change my settings here a little bit, and I will pull up a background behind me. I did, uh, that's interesting how it did that. It actually put, um, put my background in my, in my bookshelf. So that's probably not the, the best, uh, best example here, but, uh, you know, like you, you can actually put a, a brick wall behind my bookshelf. Um, and, and the reason it does this— now this is built into the StreamYard software, which is what I'm I'm using here. But what's interesting is that it's set to impose the backdrop onto a green background. As you recall, that's what I had was kind of like a green background. So it's finding the areas of green and it's layering in a background image. But what you can do with this is it's actually got— so if I I can adjust the fade. OK, so I can go all the way where it will completely block me out. Or I can come back. Here, let's see. When I start to appear— OK. So this is why I kind of prefer the real backgrounds., but you certainly can play around with these virtual backgrounds if you want. I'll get back to my real background. So, but it's interesting to, you know, to think about these things. There's green screens and there's blue screens. So you can do either one. And they usually come in a big fabric frame that you can put behind you. I have one and I can certainly do that., and I have done it in the past, right? I just put this big fabric, green fabric frame behind me, and I can superimpose any kind of image that I want on that as my background, but I have to maintain lighting for it. So, so it's, it's really something that gives you lots of flexibility on what you want to do with your background, but my preference is to, to do do the real background and then, you know, really kind of focus on doing the right kind of look for your background. And you can also use it to promote things that you want to promote. Like I have the New Media Show icon up there. Oftentimes I'll trade that out for like maybe a picture or something like that that's different. Or if I get a, you know, a square panel a picture for this show. It can be, you know, podcast tips or something like that I can put behind me. But I purposely kind of simplified this video recording today where occasionally I'll have like backgrounds or I'll frame it with, you know, like this kind of thing or something like that. I kind of shied away from that a little bit because I wanted to simplify the experience because I think What I'm trying to do here is really show that things don't have to be as complicated, really, in some ways. And I think that's the direction of the other end of the spectrum is the simplification, right? And also focusing on what really matters. And what really matters is audio quality and video quality. And I think If we focus on that, and Stuart, thank you for the comment. I appreciate it. And if anybody here watching this wants to make a comment, tell me what they're doing with their kind of studio and their office, it would be fantastic to talk about it. And if you have any questions about making any changes to what you're doing, I would be happy to share that as well because I've been through a lot when it comes to working with different microphones. I've got a shotgun mic behind me on the shelf up here. I get my finger turned around right, which oftentimes I can't quite get that right. So it's up over there, right there. So I played around with lots of microphones. I— but this is the best way, right? Because if— I think people are really concerned about audio quality these days, and since this is a a audio and video podcast. So this particular show goes out as an audio and video, um, video pod— you know, audio and video podcast. You can find both in Apple Podcasts. I have yet to upload it to the video side, upload it to Spotify, but I do intend on doing that, and I do want to get that up and to get that as as something that is available as many places as I can with this show. And, and I did upload the last week's episode where I talked about, um, you know, the conflict between, well, what's a podcast and what's a show? And I kind of define that. And I think as we look forward in the industry, I think that's increasingly important question as a content creator to ask is, what is your show? Is it a podcast, which typically these days means that it's an audio-only program, or is it a show, which means that you're trying to produce one piece of content or a group of content pieces that you can distribute in a variety of ways? And it can be an audio podcast, be a video podcast, it could be just on YouTube, could be in the Shorts, Reels, and short clips platforms that are out there, you know, TikTok. There's a lot of ways that you can distribute your content now, and I think increasingly we need to start thinking of ourselves as more digital content creators and less siloing ourselves into thinking that we're just podcasters. But I do think that podcasting I think we're in a transition right now between people's perception of what a podcast is. And I think as we look to the future, it's very likely that people will see a video as a podcast as well. So I think we're just in this period, and that's a controversial position to take in the industry that eventually video will be seen as equivalent to audio again, 'cause it used to be that way many years ago when I first started in podcasting, and I'm quickly approaching celebrating my 20th anniversary of being a podcast. I, I published my first podcast episode into an RSS feed back in— on September 15th, 2004 is when I published my first podcast episode into my RSS feed. Um, that was— it just so happened it aligned with me launching a new website for my WebTalk world radio show, um, that I was doing actually on the radios, on the XM Satellite Radio network for 2 years, and then on about 15, 16 radio stations around the country. And was an— was an audio podcast on that date. Most of my distribution back then was via streaming. So, you know, I think we are kind of going back to that again because as we've kind of moved more into video, more, more of the video is distributed as a stream nowadays. I mean, just look at what we're doing here on YouTube and LinkedIn and, and X and all these platforms. They are all streaming, and increasingly I'm seeing that that's the direction of the industry, though downloading is still important to the podcast medium, and it will be that way for the conceivable future. I don't see that changing, but I do think that there is a push towards streaming, and that also kind of aligns with access to deeper kind of viewer metrics for the content creator. And then also increasingly, as monetization opportunities become a priority to content creators and making a living from this, that, that's going to push us more and more down the path towards streaming. Um, you know, I'm, I'm actually sad to say that because when I started, I was doing pretty much everything on the digital— well, I shouldn't say that. I actually— a lot of stuff I was doing was on the download side because I was just doing audio back then. But most of my, most of my audience back then, to be honest about it, was, was via audio streaming. And that could be live, or it could have— or back then for me, it was a lot of on-demand video audio streaming is what it was for me back then. We don't see a lot of live streaming or on-demand audio streaming for audio right now. I think the— I think one of the only places we're seeing it to some degree is like on Spaces on X and, and maybe Clubhouse. Some of these platforms that started during the pandemic timeframe and have grown quite popular. I think Spaces on X has grown to be a very, very popular audio, primarily audio-only platform that has garnered huge traction. So it just gives you a little bit of glimpse, but I do think the industry has moved more towards video over the last probably 3 to 4 years, especially, um, when YouTube decided to create a podcast playlist. Now, pod— YouTube has always been involved in, um, video podcasts, um, so it— they just didn't call it that. They just called it, you know, upload your video to YouTube. But now they're embracing RSS. And— but it is a little shocking to me that they don't embrace video podcast RSS into into YouTube. So yeah, but if you have any questions about, you know, I know I've been a little bit all over the map, but I do like the concept of a quiet room. And I think if you think about it from the context of creating the best quality podcast that you can, whether it be audio or video or both, I think thinking about these things and creating the best quality audio and the best quality video experience that you can, and increasingly we're seeing a shift towards 4K. And I think, you know, one of the things with doing things live like this is oftentimes the platforms that you're using, like my current account with StreamYard is actually only 1080p. So if I wanted to do 4K, I would probably have to record this locally on my camera using a different recording method and to be able to reach that level of resolution. And I do think as we move more towards video on televisions that's coming off of the digital platforms, I did notice that X officially announced a television app that is getting rolled out to a lot of the smart TV platforms. So we're going to see video coming out of the X platform moving towards television. I think we've already seen that with YouTube. We've seen it with Rumble. I'm trying to think of any others. There's other kind of video apps that are out there that are kind of considered to be OTT apps, those kind of things. But I do think that we'll And you can actually do it, I believe, with Spotify too. Spotify has a smart TV app as well that you can get in and watch, let's say, example, Joe Rogan's video show. So I think we are shifting people's attention over to smart TVs increasingly, to tablet devices. People are still consuming a lot of video on their mobile phones, Though those consumption patterns on mobile phones tend to be for shorter content, where the big screen TVs tend to shift towards consuming longer form content, though short is still something that's consumed everywhere. And so, but it's not as great of an experience on a television if you want to watch, you know, like the Shorts or the Reels or whatever on your television. I think people gravitate towards regular widescreen formats. But I think concentrating on trying to create kind of like a comfortable recording environment that's maybe inviting, has good lighting, has good kind of acoustics, I think is what the bigger takeaway from this is that I'm putting out there in this episode tonight is think about these qualitative or not quantitative, but qualitative issues around, around the, the experience of your show and how it sounds and how it looks. And these are kind of, you know, I once was a guest on a podcast that was kind of like a design podcast. It was about design, you know, like home design or whatever. And I was always shocked that they invited me to be a guest on their show, but what they wanted to talk about was the design of a podcast, right? Let's think about the creative elements of creating a compelling podcast, right? And oftentimes those were more focused on, well, what's the website look like, or what's the COVID art or the album art or the thumbnail looks like. But the actual video portion of it is something that's really starting to come into the fore now. And you're seeing very big shows on the video side that are considered to be podcasts really investing a lot in having good kind of home office experiences or couches and chairs and kind of multi-camera shoots and things like that. I do think, and I do feel pulled in that direction. I'll be entirely, you know, thoughtful here about that is that, you know, I would love to build like a little— I don't know, little is the right way, right word to use— but like down in my basement, which is an unfinished basement right now, but to create that, finish it in a way that I could actually do a recording like that. But I am kind of remote, so it'd be hard to get guests in here. That could sit in my studio. I'm not like a Tucker Carlson that lives up in Maine, that, you know, people will fly all the way across the country just to be on his show, um, in, in person. But I do think that those are trends that we're seeing, is that the in-person recordings, um, is something that we've seen significant traction with. You know, I think the other show that does it even, even on, on remote shoots is the The Diary of a CEO program on YouTube, and it's a, it's a podcast too. There's a bunch of them like this that are out there. Just do a search on YouTube and you can find these, and you can see exactly what I'm saying here. But there's plenty of people that are doing just normal backdrops, just getting a good light and getting a good microphone, you know, thinking about their background, maybe having bookshelves with books on it You know, it's— there's been research that's come out saying that if you have like books on a bookshelf behind me or behind your show, that people will have this implied kind of takeaway that you're literary and you're smart and you're, you know, because you have all these books, right? So you must have read them all, right? So you must be really, really smart, thoughtful. You know, kind of knowledgeable and things like that if you have a bookshelf behind you. So, you know, as you can see, I do have some books behind me here. I'm not a huge, you know, paper book reader myself, but I certainly read a lot. I like audiobooks. I like kind of more PDF books, that kind of stuff. But But I also think that having, you know, things in your background that kind of represent you and the things that you've done in your life and things like that, pictures on the wall, those kind of things can give a viewer kind of an impression of who you are and what values that you have around quality around you and your kind of your style, right? At the end of the day, I guess in some ways that's the takeaway for me from this quiet room discussion is it's this nexus between quality and style. And having it be reflective of a vision that you have of how you want to project yourself, what kind of an image do you want to have. Colors have so many, and shapes and types of things have so much implied meaning in people. And that's what makes video so compelling, is that a video program communicates so much more than just audio. Because, you know, that's why oftentimes videos need to be shorter than audio, because it takes more time to communicate something of value in an audio program than it does in a video program. Like, I can you know, just the advantage of being able to pull up a picture of my little home office studio, it communicates a lot, right? It tells people, you know, what I'm thinking about and what is the priority for me on this kind of stuff, right? And it really helps people maybe visualize for themselves what's possible for them. Now, granted, each, each person has their own separate kind of environment that they have, space. How much room do you have? Is your house carpeted? Do you have pictures on the wall? Have you, you know, some of these things take investment and sometimes people aren't ready to do that. And, or they just don't feel comfort— I mean, I've heard people tell me too that they just don't feel like they can do their podcast in their home, right? That they need to go out to a recording studio, or they need to, um, you know, kind of get out of their house. Maybe their house that they're— that they live in has dogs and has young children that make a lot of noise and things like that, or you oftentimes have a lawnmower driving by your window as you're trying to do it. I was 2 years in an apartment myself for a while when I was moving to the East Coast, and the apartment that I lived in had a train that went by just like 4 stories down below along a river like every 20 minutes, and And of course they had to blow the horn, right, because they were coming up on an intersection. So they had to go woo, woo, woo. And that was happening every 15 minutes on my show. So I had to constantly ride the mute button to mute that out because even this microphone was picking up the train going by. So these are things that you have to think about. And oftentimes if you have a neighbor that wants to start mowing as long or weed whacking right when you're in the middle of trying to start a podcasts. It's happened to me many times, actually. And then also, what's the situation with your recording studio around noise, right? Do you have an air conditioner or whatever, especially in the middle of summer, that makes a lot of noise? Any other kind of noise things that can come into your environment have to be taken into consideration. So these are all factors of creating a a good podcast. And there are tools like I was mentioning, the Numano tool does allow you to record in noisy environments. And it is a powerful tool. I've got one on the shelf back here. I didn't pull it around to easily grab it, but it's basically got lavalier mics and— but it's very expensive. It's about $2,000 or so, but it has 4 microphones, has a little base unit. But that would give you the option to record pretty much anywhere in your house. And the software, that's at nomano.co if you wanted to go check that out. I did do an unboxing of the Nomano device on my YouTube channel. So if you wanted to go check that out, um, it's at no, no mono.co. So if you wanted to go check that out, I didn't have it prepared to pull up on the, on the screen here, but, um, but yeah, they're increasing our tool— increasingly our tools that you can use to record in noisy environments too and create that That kind of— that's primarily for audio, but you can use it to record the audio for your video. So if you wanted to set up, let's say, your iPhone or something like that to record the video of you doing your show and then just attach like the— in a mono lavalier, then in post-production you can go in and sync the audio. You can replace the audio that would be captured by your iPhone. And then just put the audio that the Numano captured out as your full podcast and have the algorithms up in the cloud remove any kind of ambient sound or any kind of background sound that you want to remove and upgrade the audio to sound like it was recorded into an SM7B like I am here. So, well, that's pretty much what I wanted to share with you tonight. So If you have any questions, please post them in the question field of your live streaming platform, and it hopefully will show up in front of me here, and I can answer any questions about your setup, what you're doing, what you want to do, and maybe I can help you with your thought processes around what you can do, right, and how it might work. I just appreciate you being here. Thank you so much. And I guess if, if I don't have any additional questions come through, I hope you all have a wonderful evening. And thank you so much. And go check out my, my X account on Twitter X. And then there's my email address. So it's just rob.greenlee@gmail.com if you have a question or comment. And, um, here is my YouTube channel. If you happen to be watching this on another platform, you can go over and check that out. It's just youtube.com/@robgreenlee, and that's the best way to find me over there. And then here's my website, robgreenlee.com, that actually has links to all the other podcasts that I do., that you might be able to check out. And if you wanted to see the audio and video from this, this series, which I'm up to 39 episodes now, it's, it's just at podcasttips.blueberry. That's bluberry.net. And that will take, take you to the, the website, which basically has all the audio and video episode links and the descriptions all in a a podcast, you know, blog type format. So that would be terrific if you might want to do that. And then it's also available in Apple Podcasts as a video and audio experience. So just do a search for Podcast Tips with Rob Greenlee, my, my full name, and that'll take you right to it. And I hope you have a wonderful evening, and I appreciate you spending so much time with me here. And, um, and please, uh, you know, send me questions, send me your thoughts. Are there any other topics that you would like me to, to cover or talk about on this program? And, and I would be happy to, to do that. I probably won't be doing an episode next week because I'm going to be out on the West Coast with my family. Um, so, you know, so I'll be back on the 19th, I believe is what the date is. The— is the next episode for this show would be the 19th of September at, uh, 7 PM Eastern, 4 PM Pacific. So thank you so much, and like I said, I appreciate you being here with me tonight. And please tell a friend about Podcast Tips and I just appreciate you being here, and I wish you luck with your show and your podcast. And I, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your evening, and, and I, I just appreciate you so much. Thank you. Good night.